


The Art of Sacrifice

by old_blue



Series: Sacrifice [1]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Cloak of Levitation (Marvel), Consent Issues, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Stephen Strange/Karl Mordo, Mpreg, Mystery, No Rape/Non-Con By Major Characters, Other, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-19 07:52:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10635522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/old_blue/pseuds/old_blue
Summary: “What do you want?"We have made a bargain with you."Wait, what? “Um, not with me.” Not that he can recall, anyway. “Do you mean someone from Kamar-Taj? Another sorcerer? Another, uh… human?”"You are all the same to Us. You will fulfill the bargain. And then your debt to Us will be paid. And Our debt to you will be paid."Oh shit, Stephen thinks, this can’t be good.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *Detailed warnings at the bottom*
> 
> Story takes place after Doctor Strange, but before Ragnorok and Infinity War.
> 
> This started out as a quick little crack fic that somehow grew an actual plot. Not exactly sure how that happened... But can anything really be considered crack anymore when you have magic to play with? I took some inspiration from the comics to have Stephen solve a 'magical mystery', otherwise, this is strictly movie-verse. 
> 
> This was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you have fun reading it. Feedback and criticism always welcome!

He still finds it impossible that he could ever get used to this — his new life.

Hopping between dimensions. Jumping through a ring of fire — _Johnny Cash, 1963, his mind supplies, helpfully_ — protecting the Earth and everyone living their precarious little lives on it from an infinite number of horrors. Honestly, he'd never felt smaller or more insignificant than he had in the past few months since he'd learned the truth about his new job.  
  
He still isn't sure he really wants this. But maybe that’s the point: you don't get to choose your fate. You accept what you’re given. After all, it wasn't about him, was it?  
  
It was a hard lesson to learn, maybe one of the hardest. There was a time when he knew that he could do anything, be anything, as long as he wanted it badly enough. Worked hard enough. Now he was learning that he couldn’t always be in control – what he wanted didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He finds it so difficult now trying to reconcile the man he once was with what he’s become – a servant in many ways to something bigger and better than his own ego.

Still… this new path is a struggle for him. And he can’t help pushing back against those guiding his way. He'd gotten so used to driving his life forward, always in the direction he'd chosen.

_Right off a cliff..._

"Shut up," he mutters.

The cloak flutters, nervous.

"Sorry," he says, "I wasn't talking to you."

Time to concentrate, no time to think about the past. _Not now_.

He’s working right now – trying to track down a missing artifact, some kind of box that can trap souls. _Or something to that effect.._. After the recent attacks on the Sanctums and the chaos that followed, there’s been a push by the more senior Masters – led by Wong – to get a handle on the dangerous artifacts and information that are out there in the multiverse just floating around. Stephen knows that’s Wong’s best attempt to stop what’s happened from ever happening again. _Good luck_ , thinks Stephen. _There’s just no way to stop people from trying to fuck everything up – it’s what they do best._

****

 

Wong has given him a simple spell to track the soul box – _whatever_ – and it seems to be working. He can feel the threads of magic tugging at his mind as soon as he casts it, pointing him in the direction of a nearby dimension like a human compass. The only thing left to do is conjure a portal…

He steps through the wild circle of sparks, like he's done hundreds of times by now... And immediately he’s spinning out of control into an empty, gray space as cold wind batters him from all sides, no sense of up or down. _This isn’t the right place_. _Something’s wrong!_ His arms shoot out, wildly, but there’s simply nothing to hang onto. Breathing starts getting harder as he begins to panic, the wind almost forcing itself down his throat. He can't tell if he’s falling, flying, or floating.  
  
His cloak is confused, too – it keeps fluttering out into the wind and then whipping back around him, like it can't tell which way the danger is coming from.  
  
Falling, falling into nothing, spinning — it’s an all too familiar feeling. And he can't... _can't_...

 _Calm down!_ _Breathe! Think!_

Slowly, he manages to put his scattered thoughts back together, cold logic the only thing yanking him back from the edge of another panic attack. He reasons that if he hasn't hit the bottom of anything by now, he probably isn't going to. A few deep breaths to steady himself further, and he’s finally able to unclench his hands, and try to unwind the cloak from his body. Almost impossible with this wind coming at them from all sides. As much as he loves the cloak, the damn thing is clinging to him like a straightjacket.

"It's okay, it's okay," he whispers, unsure if he’s talking to the cloak or himself.

**_That is right._ **

The voice seems to come from everywhere… and nowhere ** _._** Stephen twists around to try to locate the sound, before realizing it seems to be coming from directly inside his head. The cloak cinches around him in a sudden panic.

**_It is okay. We will not harm you._ **

“Who are you?” he asks, though he can barely hear himself speak through the rush of wind.

**_We are Us._ **

_Totally unhelpful_ , he thinks. It’s not a man’s or a woman’s voice, but somewhere in between. _No_ , he thinks, _not one voice_ – _more like a chorus of voices, speaking together_. _Us._

“What do you want?”

**_We have made a bargain with you._ **

_Wait, what?_

“Um, not with me.” Not that he can recall, anyway. “Do you mean someone from Kamar-Taj? Another sorcerer? Another, uh… human?”

**_You are all the same to Us. You will fulfill the bargain. And then your debt to Us will be paid. And Our debt to you will be paid._ **

_This can’t be good._

“Wait, _wait_ – just hold on a minute.” He needs to buy a little time to figure this out. It’s still so hard to think – the spinning is starting to make him nauseous. He presses his hands to his face to block out the nothingness around him. Tries to come up with a plan to get them out of this mess. “What do I need to do to fulfill the bargain? Can you tell me that?”

The voice is ominously silent. Stephen feels the panic start to set in again, he searches his mind for a spell – _anything_ – that might help them here. He doesn’t see how he can conjure a portal in this place, surely it would just be blown away, and how would he get to it when he can’t even tell which way is up. A weapon, then… _But how do you fight against… nothing?_ The cloak seems to sense the change in him and floats out, edges slightly curled in – ready for a fight.

But before he can conjure anything, there’s an intense wrenching – a sickening pull sideways – and his mind goes blank, orange-red sparks dissipating uselessly around his hands.

And suddenly everything is quiet.

The gray, swirling wind is gone and he’s lying on his back on… _Is this grass?_ It feels like grass under his fingertips. He blinks up into the bright sunlight filtering through blurry, green leaves. Everything seems way too colorful and fuzzy. _Artificial._ Nothing smells right here – the grass, the dirt smell like nothing.

**_Is this better?_ **

“This isn’t a real place,” he says. The words seem to stretch on forever.

**_Yes – it is not real. It is an amalgamation we have designed to calm you. You were too agitated in our reality._ **

_Amalgamation_ , he thinks, slowly. _Huh, that’s odd._ It took way too long to sound that word out in his head. And he realizes that his mind seems to be moving at half-speed. In fact, everything seems to moving at half-speed, like he’s been given a generous dose of benzodiazepine. _What’s wrong?_ He feels around his body. His arms are oddly weak and floppy, the tremor in his hands is worse, but that’s expected after what he’s just been through. He seems to be okay – uninjured – but something’s not right. _And_ _something’s missing. What?_

“Where’s my –?” he starts.

**_Your companion is safe. It is too protective of you. We will return it to you when you have fulfilled the bargain._ **

_These assholes._ He’s starting to get pissed off – thinks he would definitely already be pissed off if he didn’t feel so doped up. “Give me my cloak back” – _why is it so damn hard to get the words out?_ – “and I’ll try to help you.”

**_Yes. We will return your companion to you when you have fulfilled the bargain._ **

“Not what I meant,” he mutters.

He tries to get up – or at least sit up, he doubts he’d be able to make it to his feet, considering how he’s feeling right now – but an invisible weight suddenly pushes him back down. He struggles against the pressure on him, but it’s useless – he’s just too weak. He’s panting now with the effort, though he can’t help but keep pushing against the invisible force pinning him down. He’s so close to losing it completely, panicking, bright flashes closing in at the edges of his vision. He knows all too well what it feels like to be crushed to death _… dying again… he’s dying!_

**_Please, relax. We do not want you to be injured._ **

“Then. Fucking. Let me go,” he manages between desperate breaths.

Instead, the voice says, **_This may be painful._**

And the next instant a sudden, terrible pain hits him low in his abdomen. “ _Fuck!_ ” he gasps. _What is this?_ _What’s happening?_ He feels like he’s being disemboweled. _Again…_

And then it stops, just as suddenly as it began. There’s only a dull ache remaining. He lays there, panting, relieved and terrified at the same time. _If he could just think…_

“What… what did you do to me?”

The voice is silent. _Not good_ , he thinks.

He realizes the pressure on his body is shifting – something is pushing his thighs apart. He tries to resist, but he can’t do much to stop it. A gentle breeze brushes against his face almost like a caress. And then something is pushing against him – pushing _into_ him – and he thinks, _What the fuck!_ His heart jumps in his chest as panic begins to overwhelm him again.

The pressure inside him almost feels like it’s moving, slowly, sinuously. And it’s so terribly cold – he starts to shiver uncontrollably. He’s never felt anything quite like it before. And then a shocking pleasure begins to curl low in his belly, and there’s a familiar tingling numbness in his toes. _What…?_  

"Is this –?”

It’s _such_ a struggle to think – he feels absolutely disconnected from reality. _How is this happening?_ He gasps as a wave of more intense pleasure sweeps over him, shuddering through him. And he’s suddenly on the verge of orgasm, no mistaking _that_ feeling. _Oh, shit!_

“Is this _sex?_ ” he pants. “Is that what this is?”

There’s no answer, of course.

 _This is rape. You’re being raped_ , his mind insists. He can’t breathe, he can’t… He doesn’t want this…

 ** _Stop thinking_** , the voice says.

And everything goes black.

 

****

 

He wakes up on the cold ground, still shivering. He carefully moves his hand out through the dirt and leaves in front of him, brings a trembling handful up to his nose and inhales. _Wet dirt. Old leaves. Real._ Something brushes gently on his cheek, and he flinches away involuntarily. He sees red at the edge of his vision _. The cloak._

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.” He reaches a trembling hand up and soft fabric carefully wraps around it for a moment, gives a small squeeze. He shudders violently – _Christ, he’s so cold!_ – and the cloak tucks itself around him.

He tries to look around, figure out where he is. It’s dusk or dawn – he can’t tell. _A forest. Trees. Deciduous trees_. Red, and orange, and yellow, and rotten leaves littering the ground around him and floating gently down as a cold wind sways the upper branches. _Wind…_

He shivers again as cold adrenaline floods his body. He’ll have to think about what happened to him –

 _You know what happened_ , his mind whispers.

 _Shut up!_ He shakes his head violently, interrupting that thought – he’ll worry about it later. Later, when he can think clearly. Right now, he just needs to get home.

He sags in relief when he finds his sling ring in its regular spot on his belt. It takes him longer than it should to conjure a portal, but then he’s stumbling through it and into the Sanctum. _Back home… Safe…_

 

****

 

Stephen first discovers the problem in the shower.

He’s trying to just let the hot water wash away the events of the day. Some people do their best thinking in the shower, but Stephen finds he’s the opposite – the warmth and white noise of the spray tend to help him clear his mind. And that’s what he really needs right now. A way to clear his mind. Anything to delay thinking about what happened to him for as long as he can…

But it’s not working today – there’s something wrong. He first noticed that his body felt different walking up the stairs and then again when he stepped out of his clothes. He’d hoped it would go away, but it’s still there – just a slight difference between his legs. He reaches his hand down there and feels around. And _that_ was definitely not there earlier today.

_What the fuck?_

He performs a more thorough exam on himself after he gets out of the shower – lying on his bed is easiest. His fingers wander down there, but he’s almost afraid to touch – afraid of what he might find. There is now an extra opening, just behind his testicles. _Labia – strangely rudimentary – vagina_ , he thinks – pushes his finger a little deeper, it surprises him so much that this doesn’t hurt – _cervix?_

_Shit._

 

****

 

Of course, he should go to Wong. _Of course!_ He’d be an idiot not to. This is obviously a magic-related problem and Wong will know what to do – he’ll probably pull a book off the shelf and have an explanation in under ten minutes. And he’s just on the other side of the gateway. But Stephen hesitates. Maybe it’s his wounded pride, or his stubbornness, but he can’t bring himself to face Wong right now.

For now, he’ll deal with it in his own way.

Stephen waits for an hour or so in the busy waiting room. He’s got nothing better to do, and he’s too stressed out to read. Civilian clothes tonight – some things he picked up at Goodwill a few months ago – because he really doesn’t feel like standing out. He checks the clock on the wall for the millionth time. _Midnight_. Christine comes off shift at one.

The waiting room is a small distraction, at least. He tries to diagnose each patient as they come in – _flu, flu, tiny cut on hand –_ he rolls his eyes _–  kid having an asthma attack, flu, food poisoning, flu, flu, flu. So fucking boring!_ He doesn’t know how Christine can stand it. She’s way too smart for this. She could be doing so much more.

She finally emerges from the ER around two in the morning. _Must have stayed to finish up with patients_ , he can’t help thinking, _typical Christine_. She looks tired – dark circles under her eyes, hair escaping wildly from her ponytail – but beautiful. She almost always looks tired. And beautiful.

She laughs and jokes with the nurses at the triage desk for a moment. Even when she’s exhausted, she always has time for people, something he never cared about. That’s one of the reasons everyone loves Christine – she’s always been his opposite in so many ways.

She spots him before he can even get up from his seat. She groans dramatically and hangs her head. “What now?” she says in exasperation. But when she looks back up at him, she’s smiling.

 

****

 

They sneak into an exam room in the hospital’s urgent care clinic. Christine helps out there sometimes on her days off – _of course_ – so she has the keycode for the main doors. And the small room has everything they’ll need.

Stephen’s had his fair share of embarrassing moments – there are some memories from his undergrad and med school years that are best forgotten – but this has to be the most humiliating of all. Lying on a table with his feet up in stirrups and Christine peering intently between his legs is beyond anything that he got up to when he was younger. No haze of alcohol to dull the impact here. At least there’s a sheet covering him – he can almost pretend this isn’t happening.

“Huh,” Christine says.

“What?” he demands.

“Well… I’m pretty sure… That _that_ wasn’t there when we were sleeping together.” She smirks a little. “I think I would remember.”

“This is serious,” he says, but he snorts a little at her lame joke.

“I know, I know.” She shakes her head at him, wide-eyed. “This is so bizarre, Stephen. How…? How did this happen?”

“Magic,” he says. It’s the truth, anyway.

Christine simply says, “oh,” and nods. He can tell she hates that explanation.

“Look…” _How to put this?_ “I ran into these… interdimensional beings and they… _changed_ me. Somehow.” He really doesn’t want to talk about this.

She just looks at him with that patented mixture of sympathy and disapproval in her eyes – he hates that look. She knows when he’s being evasive, and she can probably guess why.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s the truth. Now, can you help me out here? I’d do it myself, but…”

“Of course,” she says, snapping back to professionalism. “Of course… Let me just get a few things…” She gets up to rummage around in the drawers for a few minutes. _Gloves, lube, a speculum…_ _Setting up for a pelvic exam_ , he knows. He shivers and closes his eyes. Tries and fails to think about nothing for a few minutes.

Christine touches his leg gently and he jumps, heart racing. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s okay.” She smiles at him again, concerned. He wishes he could smile back.

“All right, just… try to relax,” she says. “Just let your knees fall to the sides.”

 _Easy for you to say_ , he thinks, but he takes a deep breath and tries to let the tension out of his back and legs. _It’s just Christine, she’s seen everything already… Well, most of it._

“Okay, you’re going to feel my fingers… Let me know if you’re in any pain.” She moves his testicles out of the way gently and then she’s sliding two fingers inside of him. It’s slippery and cold and just… _wrong_. Absolutely terrifying how her fingers can just _sink_ into him like that. He can’t help tensing up at the feeling. It’s just too much, all at once.

 _Everything is fine,_ he reminds himself _, it’s just Christine – don’t panic!_

He fights desperately for a minute or two to control his breathing, until he finally, _finally_ begins to relax.

Christine can obviously sense what he’s going through, and she just waits – not moving, until he can work it out on his own.

“I’m fine,” he says gruffly. “It’s fine.” He hates this.

“Okay.” she checks his face carefully for any signs of discomfort. “I’m just going to feel around and make sure everything’s okay.”

“I know what you’re doing. You don’t have to tell me.” He instantly feels bad for snapping at her.

“Sorry. Habit,” she mutters. He can see her switch into doctor-mode, her eyes going unfocused as she examines him. Fingers sweeping along the vaginal walls, and pressing up inside to palpate his cervix. He tenses a little again when she presses there – it’s really sore.

“Sorry.” She winces in sympathy.

The rest of the exam is a little uncomfortable, but nothing he can’t handle – mostly just the push of Christine’s hands as she pokes and prods him. He freaks out a little when she accidentally brushes his prostate, which is suddenly in an unexpected place, and Christine apologizes again. Finally, she reaches up and presses down on his abdomen, squeezing him between her hand and fingers, feeling the new organs there.

“I had two cups of coffee earlier, so watch out,” he says, and she chuckles.

Stephen watches as her expression goes from puzzlement, to fascination, and back to puzzlement again.

“That’s…” she starts. “Well… You have a uterus.” She announces. “But you already knew that.”

He acknowledges the point with a tip of his head.

She pokes around the edges of it a little more. “And it feels… healthy. Normal.” She sounds surprised.

“This is definitely not normal,” he says.

She smiles that exasperated smile again. “Well, that’s what I expect from you now. I’d be disappointed if you came in for anything mundane like – I don’t know? – the flu?”

He shivers again as she takes her hands away. He feels slippery and cold down there from the lube, but at least it’s over. Then she’s picking up the speculum.

“What’s that for?” He eyes it warily.

Christine gives him her best _don’t be an idiot_ look.

“I mean, I know what it’s for.” He waves his hand impatiently. “But why do you need it right now?”

“Pap smear,” she says. “You have a uterus. Therefore, you should have a pap smear.”

He hates it when she talks to him like he’s being ridiculous. “I don’t need one. I’m fine.”

She just gives him _the look_ until he sighs. “All right. Go for it – have your revenge.”

 

****

 

Finally, he can put his pants back on.

He sits patiently on the edge of the table while Christine checks his heart and blood pressure – both normal – and draws some blood.

“What tests do you want me to order?” She’s busy filling out a lab request. Fake name, of course. “I’m thinking hormone panel, CBC, BMP…? Anything else?”

He nods – all good ideas. “Maybe… also” – he hates to say it out loud – “check for pregnancy,” he mumbles.

Christine looks concerned again. He hates it. “Stephen… Are you… Are you _sure?_ ” He knows she’s not talking about the test.

He closes his eyes. “I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

“Okay.” She nods, checks a few more boxes on the sheet. “Do you want to talk about it,” she asks, casually.

“Nope.” He makes a little popping noise on the _p_ , which he knows will piss her off.

Christine sighs and slowly starts cleaning up the mess they’ve made of the exam room. “I wish you would talk to me, tell me what you’re thinking. Sometimes… It might help.”

 _Not pissed off then. Sad. Disappointed._ That’s not what he wanted. He takes her hand gently as she reaches for the instrument tray. “Look, Christine –“

“It’s okay, Stephen. Really.” She shrugs. “I get it. It’s just that… you’re so good at pushing people away, it’s like you forget… that you don’t have to be alone.”

“Yeah.” She’s probably right. In fact, he knows she’s right. “I just need to deal with this on my own until I can figure some things out. Okay?”

She smiles at him. “Okay.” She pulls her hand away from his and clears her throat. “Before I forget, let me get you Nakeshia’s card. She’s the best OB/GYN I know. Who’s _not_ on staff here,” she adds when he starts to protest. “She’s great. I promise. And practically everyone in New York is enhanced now. She’s seen it all – she probably won’t even ask about your pet cape.”

“It’s a cloak,” he says, trying not to smile. “But still… No.”

“Why not?” she demands.

“You’re the best doctor I know. I don’t need anyone else.”

She makes a frustrated sound. “Stephen, you know I’m not a specialist. And this is…” She gestures helplessly at him. “This is way beyond what I’m comfortable dealing with.”

“Fine. I’ll take care of it myself.” He slides down from the table and shrugs his coat back on.

“ _Stephen_ …”

He finds his scarf in a pocket and wraps it around his neck. “Thanks for helping me out tonight. Let me know about those tests.”

“Stephen, wait...” She steps in front of him before he can reach the door, puts her hand on his chest.

He can tell by the look in her eyes that he’s got her.

“All right. You win. On one condition…”

“Fine. Name it.”

“Okay, two conditions…”

He rolls his eyes and she whacks him on the arm. “I’m serious. If things get complicated, and I’m out of my depth, you see a specialist. And it’s my call. Not yours.”

He thinks about it for a moment. “Agreed.”

“And… you have to be totally honest with me when I ask you how you’re feeling.”

That one’s a harder promise to keep, but he knew it was coming. “Deal.”

 

****

 

Christine calls him the next afternoon, and he already knows what she’s going to say.

“Stephen. It’s positive,” she says gently. There’s a pause as she waits for him to say something. “Do you want me to come by?”

He just closes his eyes and recites the last spell he’s memorized until it’s all he can think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed warnings (spoilers for the fic possible): rape (not graphic, but described on the page), major consent issues, icky medical procedures, traumatic birth scene, frank discussion of abortion, bad language, terrible abuse of em dashes, way too much angst, violence, major character betrayal, probable medical inaccuracies, not nearly enough cloak action, rambling – you know it’s bad when even MS Word is suggesting you use ‘concise language’.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of the fabulous comments so far - I really appreciate them. Now... it's magic time!

After four days of avoiding Wong, he can’t put it off anymore.

People have started noticing that he’s not around as much. They’re used to seeing him at least a few times a day at Kamar-Taj, when he comes by to steal books and food or when he’s forced to help out with the new recruits. Instead, he’s been sneaking in and out like a ghost when everyone in Nepal should be sleeping.

When Wong finally sends a student – nervous and stammering and way too young – through the gateway to ask if he needs anything, Stephen knows it’s really a hint that they should talk.

 

****

 

They settle down in the library with their tea, Wong in his favorite chair, and Stephen across from him. _Just like old times_ , he thinks. _If only he could go back._

Stephen’s jittery as hell tonight. Lack of sleep combined with the overwhelming desire to be anywhere but here right now are setting him on edge. He’s just hoping Wong doesn’t notice. But of course, he has. _Of course_.

Stephen manages to find a spot for his still-too-hot-to-drink tea in the organized chaos of Wong's desktop, but almost spills it setting it down. His hands are shaking too much – more than they should be.

Wong just observes all of this without comment, the usual scowl on his face.

Stephen settles back in his chair, trying to ignore the fact that he’s suddenly feeling like a student again, a really dumb one. "So…" he begins. "How's the London Sanctum coming along?”

Wong looks at him suspiciously. “It’s going well. As well as can be expected. And you already knew that.”

 _So much for small talk_ , thinks Stephen.

"Did you retrieve the Ark of Argentos like I asked you to?"

 _Oh, the soul box – he’d almost forgotten about that thing._ "Yeah, uh… about that..." Stephen stammers. Wong's scowl deepens by a single degree. Stephen takes a tiny sip of his tea, chokes on it. _Still too damn hot._ "I didn't get it. I, uh, ran into a small problem."

"What sort of problem?"

 _And, holy shit, he does not want to talk about this_. He squirms in his chair, flicks the edge of the tea cup, anything to keep from looking at Wong.

"I ran into some" – _fucking rapists_ – "beings from another dimension, who, uh, did something to me. And, yeah..." He blows out a long breath, wishes he could somehow fall into a portal and never come back.

 _It’s like trying to have a sex-talk with your high school PE teacher,_ he thinks. _Worse, it’s like trying to have a sex-talk with Wong._

Wong just stares at him for a minute. "Were they elemental beings of pure air, formless and all-knowing, who had the ability to control your body and your mind?"

"Uh, yeah. _Actually_ …" Stephen eyes him suspiciously. “How did you get all that from what I just said?”

“I know everything.”

Stephen can never tell when Wong is joking. “Right,” he says, slowly.

Wong groans a little, as if explaining himself is too much trouble. “Many thousands of years ago, there was an… incident.”

 _Ah, story time_. “An incident?”

Wong squints at the interruption. “Yes. A potential world-ending event. It is not well described in the texts, but it was serious enough that the Sorcerer Supreme of that age made a bargain with beings from a nearby dimension – a type of elemental demon. In exchange for the demons’ help with the… _incident_ , they would be given permission to use the sorcerers’ bodies for… _procreation_.”

“Procreation, huh?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…” Stephen’s not sure what that is. “A hell of a bargain,” he decides.

Wong nods sagely.

“So, this bargain… it just remains in effect forever? Is that it?” Stephen thinks maybe he could have gotten a better deal, if he’d been there.

“Yes. Unfortunately.” Wong looks tired suddenly. “But we must honor our debts, I suppose… Even if they were made many years before our time.”

 _Great_ , Stephen thinks. _Perfect. They should really add this to the warnings, too._

“And now, you’re…” Wong’s face is uncharacteristically compassionate, understanding. And there’s something else. Sadness? Regret? Stephen’s not sure – neither of those make sense to him. But, lately, nothing has been making much sense.

 _Stop it_ , Stephen thinks. _Don’t look at me like that_. “Pregnant. Yeah. Apparently.” He looks away again.

Wong seems to sense Stephen’s discomfort, and suddenly the odd sympathy is gone, like it never was there in the first place.

 _That’s better_.

Wong reaches across the desk suddenly, startling him. "Stay still," he says and presses his thumb to Stephen's forehead.

"Uh, what —?"

"Shut up. I'm trying to think."

Stephen rolls his eyes.

"I saw that," Wong murmurs, brows furrowed in concentration.

Wong keeps his thumb stuck to Stephen’s head for an uncomfortably long time, apparently deep in thought. Finally, the other man closes his hand, gives Stephen a nod. _That wasn’t weird at all,_ Stephen thinks.

"You're all messed up," Wong says at last, sinking back into his chair.

"We already knew that."

That gets a rueful chuckle out of him. "Your energy is all messed up," Wong clarifies. "Something is drawing it off, like a siphon. Feeding on it."

"I'll give you three guesses who..."

This time, Wong doesn't even crack a smile.

Stephen shifts in his chair. "So... how bad is it? Am I going to die?"

“What? No.” Wong snorts. “You'll be fine. You might just be tired a lot. And casting spells that require a lot of power will be harder.” He shrugs again. “You’re pregnant – what did you expect?"

“I don’t know…” Stephen starts. This sucks. “Maybe to not be pregnant?” _Too much to ask for, apparently._

“You won’t be able to enter the Astral Dimension,” Wong says suddenly.

 _Oh, good._ “What? Why?” Stephen realizes suddenly that he hasn’t actually tried to leave his body since… _the incident_. He’s decided that’s a good term for what happened.

“Just a consequence of being pregnant. A fetus cannot survive when the mother’s soul is separated from it. And if you’re thinking this might be a way out…” Wong looks at him shrewdly. “It’s not. Your body won’t let it happen.”

Stephen glances up at Wong – the man is smart, there’s no doubt about it. He’s never heard anything about this before – it’s interesting to him. He wonders if there’s a physiological reason for it. Maybe he’ll look into it later. “That seems like important information. Maybe you should be teaching that…”

“We do teach it.” Wong actually smiles a little. “To our _female_ recruits.”

 _Makes sense._ They sit in awkward silence for a few minutes. Stephen thinking about all the choices he could have made in his life that _wouldn’t_ have led him here, and wondering if it’s too late to go back. _Probably_ , he thinks. And, anyway, Wong’s hidden the Eye of Agamotto away somewhere safe. _It’s too bad, really_.

And Wong is thinking about… _who the hell knows what he’s thinking about?_ _Books? Killing people?_ The man is still a cypher to Stephen, in a lot of ways.

Wong abruptly gets up. "Walk with me."

"Uh, okay," Stephen says awkwardly. He eyes the tea he hasn't actually managed to drink yet.

Wong makes an impatient sound. "I don't like using magic near the books."

"Oh." Maybe that makes sense — Stephen's not sure. He just shakes his head. _Wong and his books_ , he thinks, _even weirder than his relationship with the cloak._

He follows Wong out of the library and into the courtyard. It’s dark and quiet and empty — _dinner time_ , Stephen thinks. He's missed the time spent here with the other Masters. Even misses spending time with the new recruits… _almost._ He misses Wong and his scowls, too. And he misses... he can't think about _him_. Not right now.

Wong stops under the old tree, the thin branches spreading like dark tentacles across the sky. The air is thick and heavy, threatening rain. Stephen can see lightning flickering off in the distance over Kathmandu, competing with a million multicolored lights that glitter like tiny jewels decorating the city. He shudders a little as the wind rattles the dry leaves above his head, sweeps his robes against his legs.

 _Keep it together,_ he thinks.

Wong is watching him too closely. So he steps up under the tree next to the other man, pretends nothing’s wrong.

Wong says, "Let's try something." He raises his arms over his head, crosses his wrists, and then brings them sweeping back down, leaving the air in front of him shattered and refracting light off of a hundred surfaces. _The Mirror Dimension._ He steps through, his form breaking apart into a mosaic. He raises his hand, beckoning to Stephen, and a hundred Wongs do the same.

Stephen takes one step forward, instinctively raising his hand to push through the threshold. And stops, fingers encountering a solid surface he didn't expect to find. It feels smooth and cold under his hand, like glass should. He presses harder, but the barrier doesn't give — he can see his skin reacting to something there, going pale and flat. He forces his shoulder against it, testing it out, but it’s like a wall to him.

"I can't get in," he says. _That's interesting_.

The Wongs scowl slightly in unison, but Stephen can tell he's been expecting this. He steps back through into the real world, dismisses the doorway with a wave of his hand.

"I thought that might happen..." He considers Stephen for a moment. "This... thing inside you... It wants to stay in our dimension. Needs to stay here."

"Why?"

Wong shrugs. "Energy is important. Different types of energy... will have different effects. You know that. Each dimension has a unique energy profile. Maybe that's part of the reason... That’s only speculation, though. Why this creature should need to be here, out of all the worlds in the multiverse... I do not know. Maybe there is something important about this dimension…" He sighs. "All I know is that we will be losing another Master for the next several months. When we can least afford it." He looks old and sad and very tired suddenly.

"Hey, look. I didn’t –"

Wong raises a hand to stop him. "I do not blame you." The corner of his mouth rises almost imperceptibly. "At least, not entirely."

 

****

 

Morning sickness isn’t the worst thing he’s experienced – not even close – but it might be the most annoying. He finds it so much harder to contemplate getting dressed and eating, let alone keeping the world safe from extra-dimensional threats, when he’s spending most of the time with his head in the toilet.

This morning, he’d managed to get out of bed – still exhausted from another terrible night of intensely disturbing nightmares – and drag his clothes on, but that was as far as he’d gotten before having to rush to the bathroom. He knows he should have something in his stomach all the time to keep the nausea at bay, but _fuck_ eating. Christine will be pissed when she notices how much weight he’s lost.

He's just started considering how painful drowning in a toilet might be, when he hears the front bell ringing.

" _Fuck_ ," he groans and heaves himself to his feet. He sways for a second, but nothing terrible happens. He quickly checks his face in the mirror – dark circles under pale eyes in an ashen face – he tells himself he looks brooding and mysterious instead of sick and tired.

The Sanctum doesn't get a lot of visitors. People walking by mostly don’t notice the odd building or avoid it completely – some kind of enchantment, probably. But Master Drumm had set up a sort of magical help desk here, and people with the right sort of problems – _magical problems_ – were always able to find help here when they needed it. Wong made it clear when he started the job that he expected Stephen to do the same.

Stephen glares at the bell pull – he was pretty sure that thing was broken. He should probably make sure it's broken. The wards are quiet, so this might actually be a legitimate visitor instead of an attack.

He pulls one of the massive front doors open. A woman is standing on the top step – mid fifties maybe, glasses, hair that's been dyed dark brown then left to fade back to gray pulled back into a braid. Her clothes are a mirror of his own – loose robes that are the color of red dirt and a series of elaborate sashes and belts around her waist. _No sling ring_ , Stephen notices. So she’s not a practicing sorcerer.

She’s also nervous as hell, twisting a string of beads at her neck around and around her finger. Before Stephen can say anything, she steps towards him, pushing in too close. And her eyes are way too bright. _A crazy person, maybe?_ But not a dangerous one, and not a threat to the Sanctum or to him – the wards are quiet.

“Master Strange. I’m Susan. Susan Reed.” She grabs his hand and he winces as she crushes it in a frantic handshake. “I was a friend of Master Drumm. A good friend. I need your help. Please? Can we talk inside?” It all comes out in one long shuddery breath. “ _Please_ ,” she whispers.

“It’s actually…” he’s suddenly too tired to correct her. “Never mind. Come in.” He waves her through the doors and she rushes past him eagerly, relief obvious in the slump of her shoulders.

He leads her to his study on the first floor, just off the grand foyer. Her eyes dart around – taking in the shelves stacked haphazardly with books, his semi-messy desk, the cloak hanging in the air by the door, probably all new – before she settles carefully in a chair. Her fingers automatically go back to the beads around her neck, twisting and twisting.

Stephen sits behind his desk. He can’t help staring at her hands – it’s almost hypnotic.

He thinks maybe he should offer her tea – he has a spell he can use to make some – but she starts talking before he can even ask.

“I’m so sorry to bother you like this, but I’ve run out of options. It’s about my daughter – Katherine, her name is Katherine – she’s missing. I mean, she disappeared.” She pulls a well-worn photo out of her bag, tears welling in her eyes as she looks down at it. “This is Katherine. This is my baby.”

She hands it across to Stephen. He takes it carefully. It’s a picture of a young woman, smiling at the camera, surrounded by a background of greenery – red, curly hair down to her shoulders, freckles on her narrow face, blue eyes shining.

“No one can help me. The police can’t do anything – they won’t do anything. They think I’m a crazy old woman. I just… I have no one else to ask.”

She takes a breath and keeps talking. “I used to be a sorcerer, when I was younger.” Her hands flutter back up the beads. “But it wasn’t the life for me. Everything… It was too much for me.” She pauses for a moment, eyes distant. “I wanted a life with my children, so I gave it up and left the order. And I never looked back. We lived a normal life, Katherine and me – she was everything to me. Everything.” She lets out a breath like a sob. “And I was glad I gave it all up for her. But then, after Katherine disappeared… Master Drumm said he would help me when I spoke to him – we used to keep in touch sometimes, you see. We trained together when we were students. But then… Poor Daniel... Well, you know…” she trails off.

Stephen nods. Oh, yeah, he knows.

He glances down at the picture again. He really doesn’t need this right now. “When did your daughter disappear?”

“Six years ago,” she says.

Stephen opens his mouth, but she cuts him off before he can speak. “I know that’s so long ago, _I_ _know_ …” she closes her eyes tightly, waves her hand at him like she can sweep away any protest. “I know there’s probably nothing you can do. But you’re my last hope.”

She leans forward across his desk. Her voice is low and urgent, tears falling from her face and landing on his books and papers. “I know something terrible has happened to her. I felt it. I knew right away, before I even knew she was gone… that something terrible had happened to my baby.”

Stephen sighs and slumps down in his chair a bit more, rubbing absently at his stomach as the nausea swirls up again. He already knows he’s going to help her.

And Susan knows it too. She crushes the beads in her hands suddenly, eyes glistening, and sits back down in her chair, triumphant.

Stephen holds up a hand to stop her before she can speak. “Look. I’m not a detective. I mostly deal with magical… _issues_. And this doesn’t sound like that. If the police haven’t found anything, I probably won’t either. But… I’ll see what I can do.”

She’s nodding frantically. “I understand, yes. Yes, thank you! I just need to try… try everything. Before I give up. I just need to know…”

“Okay,” he says slowly. Now he’s thinking about how he’s going to do this – find someone who’s been missing for six years. “Do you have anything of hers? Something personal?”

Susan smiles at him like he’s just shown her a clever trick. “Oh, yes! I knew you’d ask for something like that, of course. Yes. I brought something. Just a moment.” She reaches into one of the bags slung on her belt and pulls out a necklace – simple silver chain, heart-shaped charm. “It was Katherine’s. She used to wear it all the time.”

Her smile fades as she drops it into Stephen’s hand. _Probably remembering why Katherine stopped wearing it_ , he thinks.

He folds his hand around the necklace and closes his eyes. Sometimes he can get feelings from objects that are important to people, even without using a spell. _Learning to read the signatures of energy_ , Wong had said.

Initially, there’s not much – just an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss. _Susan Reed missing her daughter_ , he thinks. And then maybe another person – lighter, joyous and ambitious, smart and reckless – a teenager. He can feel her stretching away from him in time, either the future or the past, he’s not sure. And he follows it along as far as he can, until the thread just… ends.

He opens his eyes and frowns down at the necklace.

“Anything?” Susan asks, breathless. “I’ve tried a few times, but I’m so out of practice… I mostly get nothing. No trace of her…”

“Maybe something,” He’s too distracted right now. He’ll need to try again later with some actual preparation, and without Susan Reed’s crazy eyes on him.

“Can I keep this for a few days?”

“Yes, yes of course. Please.”

“Okay, let me see what I can find, Mrs. Reed… uh, Susan. And, now, if you’ll excuse me… I have an appointment.” He stands up, hoping she’ll get the hint that their little talk is over. He’s always been awkward talking to patients and their families, preferred dealing with blood vessels and fascia, brains but not people. Not much has changed.

She seems to get the message. “Oh, yes. Okay. Thank you again, Master Strange. Thank you so much!” She grabs his hand again before he can react and squeezes hard – not noticing the grimace of pain on his face. “I just… _Thank you_.”

He walks her to the door and manages to push her out after a few more rounds of thanks and hand grabbing. When it’s finally shut – and locked – he leans his back against it, exhausted. All he wants to do right now is sleep, preferably without dreaming and somewhere near the toilet. He checks his watch – it’s almost noon. He really does have an appointment – that wasn’t a lie, at least.

But he doesn’t have to be there until midnight.

 

****

 

This time, Christine is expecting him when she comes off her shift. Good thing, too, because he’s somehow managed to doze off in one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, head sagging sideways against the wall.

“Stephen. Hey…” She shakes his shoulder, startling him awake.

He looks up at her, confused for a moment by the look of concern on her face. And he realizes he’s breathing way too fast and his heart is racing. He takes a deep breath and smiles reassuringly at her. _Calm down_. _Everything’s fine. I’m fine,_ he thinks. He almost believes it.

Christine definitely does not.

 

****

 

They’re back in the urgent care clinic.

Christine’s wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his arm, all business tonight. _No fun at all_ , he thinks. He knows that after he sprung this on her – his transformation, the pregnancy – she’s probably done a lot of thinking. Worked out what she needs to do to help him. And he knows she’s keeping quiet tonight because she’s worried and she doesn’t like what she sees, as a doctor and a friend. They’ve known each other for too long, though, and she’s learned that confronting him about it won’t do any good.

Still, he can tell she’s waiting for him to be honest with her – part of their deal, after all – but he’s not ready. Not yet.

She makes him pee in a cup and draws his blood, polite and professional but also, he knows, _so disappointed in him._

And even though Christine’s not really talking to him, he can tell she’s pissed when he steps onto the scale. Ten pounds – not a significant loss for someone his size, but he should probably be gaining weight by now. Christine just sets her mouth in a thin line and writes the number down with vicious little slashes in his chart.

 

****

 

Christine finds a little hand-held Doppler and makes him lie down on the exam table.

“Sorry,” she says as she squirts cold jelly on his skin. _Not really sorry, though,_ he thinks.

And then they’re listening, both probably wondering what a 38-day-old demon baby sounds like.

The only thing Stephen hears at first are the slow tidal sounds of blood through his aorta. Christine moves the probe around on his belly, pressing it in, and suddenly there’s the quick swishing of a tiny heart.

They’re both entranced by the hypnotic sound for a while. It sounds, well, surprisingly… _normal_. “One-forty beats per minute,” Christine says, finally. _Totally normal for a fetus this age_ , he thinks and then _, this is really happening_.

“Sounds good,” Christine says. She wipes off the probe and puts the Doppler carefully back in its case, buying time to think, Stephen knows. When she turns back she smiles at him for the first time, but it’s tentative. He can tell she’s waiting to see how he’ll react.

He scrubs as much of the slime off as he can and pushes his robes back down to cover himself. When he doesn’t say anything for a while, Christine clears her throat.

“Look, Stephen… If you…” She takes a breath and starts again. “If you don’t want to go through with this – and I completely understand if you don’t – then there are other options. I mean… I wouldn’t be able to help you with that, but I could refer you to someone…”

“No.” He smiles at her, mostly to reassure her that he’s fine with what she’s asking, wishes it could actually be something he might consider. “I don’t think that’s an option for me. If I want to… be myself again. I think my only chance is… letting this happen.” As much as he would like to erase it all, he knows he can’t.

She nods. “Magic stuff, huh?”

“That’s right.”

She nods again, and he knows it’s her way of telling him that she’s going to be expecting some real answers from him. Soon.

He just hopes he’ll be able to come up with something good when the time comes.

 

****

 

Later that night he dreams again that he’s dying.

_He’s being crushed this time – ribs cracking in his chest, organs rupturing, pain exploding through him as Dormammu presses him slowly, so slowly, into the ground. He tries to scream, but no sound comes out. His lungs are far too wrecked to hold any breath. Silently, he begs and pleads for death to come and take away the pain – for his body to finally realize it’s been utterly destroyed and just fucking give up…_

_But death doesn’t come, and suddenly everything shifts – pleasure creeping slowly in and mixing with the pain, until he can’t tell what he’s feeling anymore. He gasps and tries to curl in on himself, but then he’s back in that too-bright world, lying helpless in the fake grass as something cold moves inside him. He can’t get away, and then he suddenly doesn’t want to. He wants… He doesn’t know what he wants. He wraps his legs around the empty air, pulling it in closer, as pleasure sparks through his body and his mind goes blissfully white and empty. And it feels so good – it’s been so long since he’s felt so good… And the pressure reaches a tipping point inside him and suddenly he’s coming – pulling and ripping at the fake grass as his body arches off the ground…_

He wakes up, panting, in his bed. Something is on top of him, trying to hold him down, and he struggles against it for a moment, heart racing, before realizing it’s just the cloak. Trying to help in its own way. “Stop! I’m fine, I’m fine,” he manages, and the cloak reluctantly releases him.

He sits up and rests his head in his hands. He’s sweating and shaking, on the verge of vomiting just thinking about the dream. And he suddenly realizes, horrified, that he’s come in his pants.

“Oh, this is so fucked up,” he mutters.

 

****

 

He feels less than useless now – underpowered and trapped in this dimension. _Wings clipped_. _Pathetic,_ he thinks _._

The other Masters take up the slack for him, of course, doing what he can’t – hopping through the multiverse on Wong’s orders, strengthening and testing the protective spells that cover the Earth as the London Sanctum comes back online. And Stephen makes more of an effort to help where he can. For the next few weeks, he’s busy working with the newest students at Kamar-Taj – teaching them basic spellcasting and focus. Eventually, he’s crossed through the gate so many times that he loses track of which day it is in both New York and Nepal.

It’s a relief, actually, to be so focused on something else for a while – no real chance to let his thoughts turn dark. And still… He can’t help noticing that the other Masters and some of the students look at him now like he’s some damaged thing, faces turning sympathetic when they think he’s not aware of them. Staring at him. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t look any different yet – his robes hide the slight bulge in his belly pretty well, and he’s thinner, but not _that_ thin. He looks… _normal_. And then he thinks maybe Wong has said something. But that seems even more unlikely. And that just leads him to the conclusion that he really is getting paranoid.

And maybe he’s going a little bit nuts now, too. He fantasizes about telling the new recruits to get out while they still can, grabbing and shaking them until they realize they’re surrounded by crazy people, screaming in their stupid, hopeful faces until they know there aren’t any answers at Kamar-Taj. Just more pain.

But he doesn’t.

 

****

 

He’s been so determinedly busy that he’s almost forgotten Susan Reed and her missing daughter until he spots the necklace on his desk, half-buried in books and manuscripts.

He sets aside the bowl of plain white rice he’s been eating – the only thing that doesn’t seem to make him sick now – and picks it up. He lets it swing from his hand, watching the light from the fire shimmer and flash over the chain.

Maybe… now is a good time.

He stands up, eyes focused on the necklace. _How to do this?_ It’s not something he’s really tried before, but he knows it’s possible.

The cloak flies up and settles happily on his shoulders, apparently excited that they might be about to do something other than read books and mope around.

Stephen chuckles. “I know, buddy. I know.”

He thinks for a minute, wishing again that he still had access to the Mirror Dimension – it just feels safer trying new spells there first. No sense risking the Sanctum – things tended to explode when he gets creative. And he’d even started sleeping there, after accidentally setting his blankets on fire during a particularly terrible nightmare a few months ago. Luckily, the cloak had smothered the flames out before any serious damage could be done.

He’ll just have to do without it. _No safety net_.

“All right. Let’s try something.” He’s not sure when he started talking to the cloak, but it definitely seems to be listening. The clasps on his shoulders give a little squeeze of encouragement.

He raises his hands, focusing his attention on the chain hanging between them. Silver chain, heart-shaped charm – nothing special. He lets his eyes lose focus until the shapes blur into a warm swirl of light and darkness, filling his vision. His breathing slows down to almost nothing as he sends out a little piece of himself towards the necklace. Not his astral body, just a small bit of his consciousness reaching away from the rest of him.

He can feel the same threads he’d felt before – one full of sorrow and loss, the other joyful and free, untamed. He follows this thread – _Katherine’s thread_ – reaching along the path of energy as it stretches off into the distance. Whether through time or space, he can’t really tell. _Both, maybe._ Faster and faster, he’s being pulled along now by the thread, itself. Vaguely, he’s aware of his own body – absolutely still and barely breathing, the cloak rustling against him – but he’s so far away now he hardly cares.

And then the thread slows, and changes. The energy turns darker, more sinister, as if the person he’s following is no longer Katherine Reed at all and he’s skipped onto the wrong path. And yet… It feels like her still – the same wild, reckless soul – just… _different somehow._

His hold on the thread is suddenly tenuous – he can feel himself slipping away from the place that he’s gone. But there’s a darker shape… And suddenly cold, blue eyes turn towards him, regarding him calmly. And the awareness in them is alarming. _Not possible_ , he thinks. Red begins to creep in on the edges of his vision. _That can’t be good._ He releases his weakening hold on the thread and snaps back to himself.

He wakes up gasping for breath – back in his own body, but feeling disoriented. Stephen recognizes it as the beginning of another panic attack. _Not what he needs right now._ He struggles for a few minutes to remain calm, reciting spells and incantations over and over in his head until his heart slows. The red edges in his mind are gone, the eyes are gone. He holds up his hand. The necklace is just a necklace again.

“Well,” he says to the cloak, “at least that was interesting.”

 

****

 

Christine comes by the Sanctum just after dusk on a Monday.

Of course, she’s there to check up on him, he knows that – make sure he’s eating again, and sleeping. Her concern would have bothered him, just a couple years ago, but now he appreciates the company. At least she’s in a better mood tonight.

He hasn’t gotten very far on the problem of the missing girl, frustrated already at the lack of information and his inexperience. So, instead, he’s working on setting protective wards in one of the rooms on the main floor. _A… study? Meeting room?_ He’s not entirely sure what it’s for, but it has a lot of windows – each a potential point of entry for someone – _or something_ – with bad intentions. No doubt the Sanctum is already well fortified. It just makes him feel safer to keep adding more. He’s becoming paranoid, maybe, but that seems like a healthy response to some of the dangers he now knows are out there.

“This place is so weird,” Christine says, looking around the mostly empty room. “Like a horror movie set in a museum… Or an antique store. And I think it might actually be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, like some kind of optical illusion. It’s totally bizarre.” She leans in closer to examine a colorful tapestry on the wall – the patterns shift and slither over the surface – and shakes her head. “I can’t believe you live here now. It’s just so… so…”

“So… what?” he asks.

“So not… _you_ ,” she finishes.

She runs her finger through a thick coating of dust along the mantle, before giving him a meaningful look. He just shrugs in response. He’s too busy to clean. “It’s the new, dirtier me,” he says, and smirks.

“I think I might like this new you… better than the old you,” she says gently.

The smile slips from his face. He takes a deep breath. “I know that I was a complete asshole. Just a total dick. To everyone. _Especially_ to you. And I’m… I just –”

“It’s okay,” she says, holding up her hand. “You’ve already apologized. And we really don’t have to talk about it again. It’s in the past. Anyway,” she smiles again. “I don’t want to interrupt your… work. Magic. _Whatever_. You should keep doing what you were doing. I’ll just hang out for a while.” Christine settles in one of the old, threadbare chairs by the huge fireplace, picks a medical journal out of her bag.

It’s cozy in here, at least. The fire he’d started earlier is the only source of heat in this drafty room, but it’s roaring now. He absently thinks about updating the Sanctum’s heating systems to something slightly more modern than the middle ages, but he’s pretty sure the funds aren’t available for that. When he has more time he’ll look into it… Ask Wong about it. Maybe.

Christine watches him work for a few minutes in silence – journal forgotten in her lap – as he moves slowly around the room, sketching the shape of the wards in the air with his fingers, blowing a little puff of breath onto each one to set the thin orange lines alight, and finally pushing them out to sink into the glass of each window. He finds this sort of repetitive work calming – when he’s absolutely focused on one thing, his mind is peacefully blank. He doesn’t have to think about what’s happened. All that’s happened…

"Why do you do that?" She asks softly.

"Do what?" He's already working on drawing the next ward – it's an intricate little pattern – but he's done it so often by now that it’s almost like second nature. He finishes the final lines with a flourish and blows on it, feeling a little touch of pride when it flashes and sparks to life.

" _That_ ," she says. "Why do you blow on them?"

He smiles to himself. "Some spells need a little kick to activate them.” He flicks his wrist to send the new ward flying against the glass. “Back at the, uh... cult compound" – he smirks at her and she rolls her eyes – "they taught us to snap our fingers. But that's hard for me, so I... improvised a little.”

She thinks about that for a moment. “They’re beautiful,” she says.

He tips his head slightly in acknowledgment. “Dangerous, too. I hope.”

****

 

Stephen finds that he likes talking to Christine about magic. She doesn’t ask him about Harry Potter or make him do stupid tricks. She poses interesting questions, the kind of things he’s wondered about, himself.

“So… Wanda Maximoff…”

“Who?” he says. They’ve moved to the kitchen to try to find something for dinner. _Not going to end well_ , Stephen thinks. He’s useless at cooking – and, lately, at eating – there’s nothing edible in here.

Christine closes another empty cupboard with a small sigh. “Scarlet Witch. You know – from the Avengers. Don’t you ever watch TV?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He knows who that is. “What about her?”

“Do you think she’s using magic or… something else?”

“Definitely magic,” he says, leaning back against the kitchen island. He’s already given up. And the sooner Christine realizes there’s no food here, the sooner they can order take-out. For once, he’s actually hungry.

She opens another cupboard, grimaces, and shuts it. “How can you be sure? I mean, it doesn’t look exactly the same as the things you do.”

“Magic is just using your mind to channel and manipulate energy. That’s what she’s doing, so… therefore, it must be magic.”

“Then why does it look so different?” She flops against the counter, defeated in her quest for dinner. “Aren’t you curious?”

Of course, he’s curious – he’s thought about it a lot, actually. He pauses for a moment. _How to explain it?_ “The energy I use is drawn from other dimensions, outside of ours.” He sketches a harmless little sigil in the air with one finger – orange lines precise, solid –  evaluates it for a minute, and then waves it away. “I think, maybe, she’s drawing her power directly from _this_ dimension. That might be why it looks different – each dimension has its own… _signature_ energy.”

“Have you ever tried using energy from our dimension?”

Another good question. “No,” he admits. “But I’ve thought about it.” _And why hasn’t he actually tried it? Maybe…_

“Hold on,” he says, standing up a little straighter. He lifts his hand again and narrows his eyes, concentrating on what he wants to happen. What _should_ happen, if he’s right.

“Hold on –” Christine holds up her hands. “Whoa! I didn’t mean you should try it right now.”

“Relax,” he says. “I know what I’m doing… mostly.” He gives her a sly smile.

“Just… don’t blow anything up, okay?”

“I’ll try not to,” he says, absently. He can feel the energy beginning to gather around his fingers – slippery and wild, unfocused. It coalesces into a small ball of swirling red.

“Holy shit!” Christine is staring, wide eyed, grinning. “That’s exactly it!”

“Yeah,” he says, watching the little ball pulse and writhe in his palm. It feels different – less substantial, somehow – and he has to concentrate hard to keep it from slipping away. _Interesting_ , he thinks, _this could be useful… And nothing blew up._

Finally, he relaxes his mind and lets the energy scatter. He shakes out the cramps in his hand.

Christine’s still looking at him with that big grin on her face, like he’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen.

“So…” he raises his eyebrows. “Takeout?”

 

****

 

They eat and talk until it’s late. He knows it’s time for Christine to go before things get more complicated. And she knows it, too, but she hesitates.

“I should probably check you out before I leave.” She’s suddenly shy. “I _am_ your doctor, after all.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the foyer. “I brought all my stuff…”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“At least let me take your blood pressure.” She smiles at him. “And draw some blood. And –“

“Okay, okay.” He knows he’s fine, but if it makes Christine feel better, he’s willing to sacrifice a bit more of his dignity. And he really doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. “Where do you want to do this?”

“Do you have a bedroom somewhere in this place?”

“Yeah.” He gestures at the back stairs. “Just up there, second floor… _Hold on_. This sounds like a porn movie I rented once… I’m not going to have to call you ‘Doctor Palmer’, am I?”

Christine punches him lightly on the arm, laughing. “Shut up. I’m just going to grab my stuff.” She hesitates in the doorway. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m pretty sure I can find my way back to the kitchen, but that’s about it. This place is a maze.”

“I’ll wait here until you get back.” He starts moving dishes to the sink. “Just don’t touch anything! Something might blow up!”

“ _Stephen_ …” she warns.

“Kidding! Just kidding.” He chuckles to himself. He and Wong have already moved all of the dangerous artifacts to a safer place.

“And I am not sleeping with you!” she yells from the foyer. “So don’t even think about it.”

“Too late,” he mutters.

 

****

 

Christine tries to hide her surprise when they get to his bedroom. He can’t really blame her. It’s nothing like what he would have chosen before. Nothing like his old apartment. He still misses it sometimes – the sleek, modern lines and amazing views of the city. But that’s long gone, now…

“This is, uh…” He can tell she’s trying not to offend him. “Cozy,” she decides.

He looks around with her. _Cozy is one word for it_ , he thinks. It’s a small room, but not _that_ small. He’s just stuffed it full of books and manuscripts. And bookshelves with books on them. And a small table, also with books on it.

“I like to read a lot,” he says, feeling defensive.

Christine nods. “I get that,” she says carefully.

There’s also a nice fireplace with a comfortable chair he’d dragged up from some other part of the Sanctum. And a small bed – a single – he really hasn’t needed anything more. There are larger, more elegant rooms here – some that change each night to suit the occupant’s wishes – but this one suits his needs right now and he likes that it always stays the same.

Christine lets out a little yelp as the cloak suddenly floats up from its favorite spot in his chair. “Jesus,” she breathes. “Can’t you keep that thing in a closet?”

“What? The cloak? We’re life partners now.”

“Ha, ha,” she deadpans.

He sits down on the bed and watches Christine as she rummages in her bag for supplies before finally deciding to just drag it all over. She scoots warily around the cloak and sits down next to him.

She drapes a stethoscope casually around her neck. “How are you feeling?”

 _Here it comes_ , Stephen thinks, _the moment of truth._

“Not too great,” he admits. He made a promise to Christine to be honest, and he’s not doing either of them any favors by holding back. And, anyway, he has absolute trust in her. He thinks it’s time he started showing her that.

“I’m sure you already know this, but… _This_ ” – he gestures at himself, his middle – “isn’t something I wanted, obviously. I just… couldn’t stop it…” That’s the worst part – that it just… _happened_ – and he couldn’t do anything. And he can’t talk about this – _the incident_ – without panicking. Not yet.

Christine knows what he’s trying to say – she just nods quietly.

“And, on top of that… I’m not sleeping. I _can’t_ sleep. Ever since… last year. I know I told you a little about what happened, but it’s so much worse. So much worse than… what I told you. And it’s been hard for me to sleep… since then.” He looks down at his hands. It’s hard to admit this to her. _Hell_ , it was hard to admit to himself that he might have a problem.

“I have these nightmares about what happened… about dying over and over again. Just constantly running through my head. And now it’s all mixed up with… this other thing. And it’s bad. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to sleep. I’m _afraid_ to sleep. Because then I’ll be back there again… And I’ll die again…” He scrubs his hands angrily through his hair. “I just can’t stop… _dying_.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’ll be okay. We can figure this out.”

He huffs out a breath. “That’s exactly what Wong said.” He just doesn’t believe it somehow.

“Maybe…” Christine hesitates a moment, and he already knows what she’s going to say. “Maybe you could try talking to someone. Someone who can help you work through this stuff. I hear it can help.” She says it so carefully, like she thinks he might explode at the suggestion. And, a few years ago, he probably would have. “I could refer you to someone. I know some good people.”

“Wong already gave me a few names.” He still has the cards in his pocket that Wong had forced on him the last time they’d met.

Christine looks surprised.

“What? We’re not savages.”

She smiles. “It’s not that. It just sounds like, maybe… you might actually be considering it.”

That’s the weird thing. He _is_ considering it. Not every problem can be solved with magic, after all. He’s starting to realize that.

Christine puts her hand on the back of his head and brushes her fingers through the soft hair there. That was always her best weapon against him when his mind was racing a million miles an hour and nothing else could calm him down. She’d tackle him and pin him to the bed, work her fingers through his hair until he stopped thinking so much and finally lay still. Sometimes, they’d have sex – she would ride him slow and sweet, until they were both reduced to nothing but the growing pleasure between them and the sound of their breathing. But, more often than not, she’d let him drift off.

"Still works," he says. He can already feel his body dipping towards sleep. Normally, that sensation would send him into a panic that would find him pacing around the empty sanctum, searching for the next distraction that will keep his mind occupied for a few more hours. Delay sleeping a little longer.

Tonight, however, he finds that it doesn't scare him so much. Maybe having Christine here is enough to keep the nightmares away.

“Lie down,” she says softly.

He does as she says, stretching out on his tiny bed. Christine runs her fingers across his forehead then down and back behind his ear, repeating the motion until he’s practically boneless.

When she takes her hand away, he groans in protest.

“Sorry,” she says. “Doctor time.” She tugs at the top of his robes until she can slip the stethoscope down to his chest. It’s not cold, at least. He keeps his eyes closed as she moves the chestpiece around, hair brushing gently against his face when she leans over him.

Once she’s satisfied that everything sounds normal, she scoots down the bed and pushes his robes aside, sliding his belts up a bit so she has more room.

“I’ll try not to tickle you too much.”

“It’s fine,” he mumbles.

Christine presses her fingers into his abdomen, gently at first, then deeper as he exhales. She slides her hands around, being thorough, feeling around the slight bulge there. There’s no pain, even when she really digs into him, and he’s relaxed enough that it doesn’t tickle.

 _Left lower quadrant, left upper quadrant,_ he thinks, sleepily. _Right iliac region…_

She finishes her exam and puts his clothes back in place. “I can’t take your blood pressure or draw any blood while you’re wearing this,” she says, tugging at his sleeve.

“Took it yesterday. 112 over 74. Bloodwork can wait.” He’s so tired now. Maybe he’ll actually sleep for a few hours before the dreams catch up with him.

“Fine.” Christine sighs, and he can tell she’s trying to make up her mind about something. “Shove over,” she says finally.

“You said you weren’t going to sleep with me,” he teases but he rolls onto his side towards the wall to make room for her.

“I know.” She stretches out next to him, tucking in against his back. She sounds tired now, too. “But when have I ever been able to resist your charms?” He can hear the smile in her voice.

“Never,” he replies. The solid warmth of her against his back feels good. He reaches behind to pull her arm over and around his body and Christine slides her hand under his robes to rest gently against his chest, brushing her fingers along the edges of the scar there. She always did like to feel his heart beating when they were just lying in bed, back when they were together. Probably so she’d know when he was actually sleeping, instead of just faking it.

“So… Are you sure you don’t want to…?” He might be halfway unconscious, but it’s been a while since he’s had anyone in bed with him.

She snorts against his neck. “Not a chance in hell. Go to sleep.”

 _Probably for the best_ , he thinks. He’s already a mess of psychological issues.

A little bit later, he’s vaguely aware of the cloak floating down and tucking itself in around them. Christine tenses up for a moment before muttering, “that just happened,” and relaxing against him once more.

The next thing he’s aware of is the bright sunlight streaming in through the windows. He sits up and looks around, sending dust motes drifting and swirling gently like snow. Christine’s gone, of course – probably already back in the ER saving lives – and it’s a little too quiet in the Sanctum again. The cloak slides off of him with a gentle caress and does a little spin as it lifts into the air, as if excited for the new day.

It’s the first time he’s slept through the night in over a year.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short little interlude, today. Bring on the angst...

After trying unsuccessfully to run into Wong for three days, Stephen finally gives up and decides to camp out in the library. _Ambush him._

The man is busy, there’s no doubt about that, but Stephen can’t help feeling lately that Wong is intentionally avoiding him.

The other annoying thing is that everyone at Kamar-Taj seems to know what happened to him. People have started giving him _advice_. Really terrible advice. But he tries to be charitable and imagine it’s their way of letting him know they care. And he tries really, really hard not to say something truly terrible back.

He decides to spend the time waiting for Wong by researching _the incident_. He knows he’s been putting it off — just another attempt to avoid thinking about what happened — and he should really stop doing that…. But where to start?

He pulls down a few books at a time and starts stacking them at a desk. Then there’s the tedious job of quickly scanning each page looking for mentions of anything resembling a world ending event or any kind of bargain with demons. Made more difficult because almost nothing is in English. He thinks this whole thing would be so much easier if Wong would set up some kind of searchable database. Or maybe there’s a spell that could do that — pull what you needed out of the books — and if there isn’t, there should be, _damn it_.

Hours later, he’s found a lot of references to things that could be _the incident_ — and the sheer number of them does not bode well for his future — but none of them also mention any kind of bargain with anyone, demons or otherwise. And he’s found a lot about sorcerers making deals with demons. None of them seem to involve anyone getting pregnant, which is… _odd_.

Eventually he runs out of room on the tiny desk and moves to the floor, leaning up against the stacks and dragging the books down with him. He’s so involved in an ancient Sumerian text, following along with his finger as he scans the page, that he doesn’t notice until Wong is standing right over him, with the most intense scowl on his face that Stephen’s ever seen.

“Uh…” He looks around at the scattered books and back up at Wong. “This was all supposed to be cleaned up before you got back.”

Wong just scowls harder, which Stephen didn’t think was possible.

“Are you going to threaten my life again? Because, honestly, it’s starting to lose its effectiveness.”

“What are you doing?”

Stephen tries to wipe the guilty look off his face. “I was… trying to find some more information about… what happened to me.”

Wong looks a little startled at that. _Odd._

“But I haven’t really found anything,” Stephen continues. “Nothing useful, anyway.” He watches Wong carefully. “Maybe you can help me…”

He can see Wong considering for a moment. “All of the books that mention the incident have been moved to a safer location. They contain dangerous information. And I don’t have time to get them out right now,” he adds.

This is news. “When did you move them?”

“Recently,” Wong says.

_What about Wong’s own policy? No forbidden knowledge? Did he just forget about that?_

Stephen looks around at the shelves — no open spaces, except for the ones he’s just made. He’s sure he has the layout of the entire library memorized — knows the spines of the books as well as the scars on his hands — he’d recognize if more than a few books were missing. And he’s been in the library almost every day. No one has moved anything.

He’s pretty sure Wong just lied to him. He’s just not sure why.

“Okay,” he says slowly.

Wong motions impatiently for him to follow.

Stephen tries to get up from his awkward position on the floor, which is a lot harder now that he can’t lean forward. After watching him flail around for a few seconds, Wong sighs, reaches down and yanks him to his feet, like he weighs almost nothing.

Thanks,” Stephen says. He looks around at the mess he’s made. “Uh. Let me just…”

“Leave it. I’ll find a student to clean it up.” Wong’s smile is vicious.

 

****

 

They’re back at Wong’s desk, again. No tea this time.

They talk for a little while about which of the new recruits has any potential, and the construction of the London Sanctum, and when the Hong Kong Sanctum might get a new Master — all things they’ve discussed before, many times — but Wong seems oddly distracted and anxious, like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

Stephen watches him closely. It bothers him that Wong is acting so odd — he’s always seemed like the most grounded of all the Masters and certainly the most practical. And it bothers him that he can’t figure out why he’s changed. Is it _him_ … his whole situation? Is there something else going on at Kamar-Taj? Stephen hasn’t heard anything new — if anything, it’s been unusually quiet for an unusually long time — no impending magical disasters, no attempts by evil cultists to take over the world. _Boring._

They finally run out of small talk and just sit in silence for a while. _Maybe Wong is just dealing with his own problems,_ Stephen thinks. _In his own stoic librarian way_. Maybe the stress of being in charge is finally getting to him. Then there’s the Ancient One dying. Mordo leaving. A lot to handle. It’s actually sort of comforting to be reminded that other people — even Wong — are also wrapped up in their own issues. Just as much of a mess as he is. He loses track of that, sometimes.

“I almost forgot… Before you go…” Wong reaches into a pocket and pulls something out — a thin cord with a ring hanging from it. “You should wear this.”

Stephen frowns at the necklace. Leather cord, silver ring, a man’s size, tarnished and worn smooth at the edges. He takes it carefully from Wong’s hand. He can’t feel anything special about it — no magic, no energy at all. It’s just a ring.

He looks up at Wong, confused. “What’s this for?”

Wong’s just staring at the ring, his eyes distant. When his attention finally snaps back to Stephen, he says, “Nothing. Just a good luck charm. But you should wear it.” He shifts a little in his chair and adds, “It would make me feel better.”

Stephen can’t quite hide the surprise on his face. When has Wong ever cared about that sort of thing? Or about him? And good luck charms? Do those even exist?

Wong notices him hesitating and sighs. “Just wear it, Strange. You don’t have to question everything. Just do what I ask, for once.” He suddenly sounds exhausted.

 _What the hell_ … Stephen just shrugs and slips the cord over his head. He tucks the ring under his robes. “Happy now?”

Wong eyes fix on the little bump the ring makes in Stephen’s clothes. He doesn’t look happy, but he does look relieved.

 

****

 

Months pass, too quickly, and suddenly it’s January in New York — cold and sharp and depressing.

Depressing to Stephen, at least. _Other people probably don’t notice_ , he thinks, _they just get on with their lives._ He’d always hated winter in the city — the bright lights and colors of the holidays were too fake, the snow was too dirty, everything was too dark for far too long — but he’d never really let it get to him before. Finding enough interest in his work, not leaving the hospital for days at a time so he didn’t have to face the shitty winter weather, so that he could keep on going until the year changed again. But, lately, he’s finding it harder to keep up the act that everything is okay. He can feel himself sinking down into something dark and cold, like he’s drowning.

And even if it’s not the same, work is still the best distraction.

He spends a lot of his free time now thinking about the Katherine Reed case. He’d even gone out and bought a cheap bulletin board with his very limited funds. Now it stood in his study, covered with notes and a large map of New York state, pins marking spots where he thinks something suspicious might have happened — the town where Katherine and Susan lived, the spot where she was last seen. And through his research, he’s found other cases — all kids around the same age, all missing and never seen again — they all lived and disappeared in the same, vast rural area where Katherine had vanished.

He slowly adds more pins to the map as he finds more cases. There’s not a lot of information online, but enough… He sorts through hundreds of missing person reports, Amber Alerts, newspaper articles. He finds the pattern quickly, but he’s not sure what it means yet.

They vanish in the Fall. And in the Spring. In the first weeks of September, and in March. For years, at least five years back that he can find, the pattern holds. What’s so important about those times? those dates? The turning of the year from warm to cold, and back again? The start of Fall? The start of Spring? The equinoxes?

 _Yes_ , he thinks. _That’s it_.

But, why? Why would anyone care about the equinoxes? Is he biased? He must be biased. He worries that he’s overthinking this — trying to come up with a magical solution for a mundane problem. He’s been guilty of that in the past. And magic isn’t the answer to everything. Or anything, really.

He adds one more pin to his map _. Jennifer Wilson, sixteen, lived in Anderson, last seen there when she left band practice, September 15 th, 2012. _He steps back to look at the picture that’s been forming with the addition of each new pin — a red ring. A ring of disappearances. And at the center… Not much. A few tiny villages — _Beaver Kill, Hansen’s Lake, Fallbrook…_

And he thinks… if he was the kidnapper, and he wasn’t very smart, and he wanted to keep kidnapping people for a long time and not get caught…

_What would he do?_

He thinks he’d pick people that were close to home — easier to move them shorter distances, if they needed to be moved, and the territory is familiar, safer — but not too close. Wouldn’t want to draw suspicion, after all.

And, after years of doing the same thing every Fall and every Spring, after so many disappearances… what would that look like? If someone happened to get suspicious and started looking at the big picture…

 _Like a bullseye,_ he thinks. _Pointing right at you._

 

****

 

He’s gotten Detective McAllister’s name from Susan Reed. “She’s the only one who didn’t treat me like a crazy old lady,” she’d said. “She’s the only one who tried to actually… do something.”

It’s easy enough for him to get around using magic so he decides to visit her in person, see if he can find out anything more about the disappearances before he goes any further. Because he has, essentially, nothing at all to go on except a hunch and a map.

Maybe, if he had more information, he could figure out what he needs to do next…

After a quick phone call to make sure the Detective is actually in her office and has time to see him today, he opens a portal in a little stand of trees behind the sheriff’s station. He’s getting better at using Google Maps to visualize places he’s never been before. _Who knew it could be so useful?_

It strikes him, suddenly, that he’d been subconsciously dreading using his sling ring again until just now. But he doesn’t get sucked into a dimension filled with asshole demons, which is a relief. And no one on the other side notices him stepping out of thin air, which is also a relief. He releases a shaky breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding as he dismisses the portal. He’s learned the hard way that it’s dangerous to just leave them sitting around — who knows what might come through…

The Ulster County Sheriff’s station is not terribly impressive — a squat, ugly brick building, surprisingly new, and tucked back in the trees on a country road, all-terrain police vehicles lined up against the building entrance — exactly what he expected for a rural area like this. Old, dirty snow is piled up in huge gray mounds against the edges of the parking lot, so high they look like they might last until the end of spring. The sky is gray, the asphalt is gray. The trees are just black and darker gray against the rest. Stephen tries to shake off the grayness creeping up on him and concentrate on the job.

 _Focus_ , he thinks. _Act normal_.

He draws a few curious stares as he steps up to the front desk, but he’s used to that by now. He expects that, too. He’s just starting to look… _different._ Still within the range of normal — a tall, skinny guy with a slightly odd-looking beer belly — not too unusual. And his clothes are still bizarre enough that most people focus on that, instead. He’s been wearing his robes more often when he goes out, now, taking advantage of the distraction they provide.

Detective McAllister is nothing like he’d expected. She’s black, in her mid-forties, dressed in a stylish pantsuit, neat braids pulled back into a tight bun. Younger than he would have thought for someone in her position. He wonders how hard she had to work to get where she is. And he wonders how she ended up here, in what is essentially the middle of nowhere New York.

Stephen can tell that he’s not what she expected either. She looks him up and down — her eyes sharp but friendly — taking in his robes and belt, his black coat. "What are you supposed to be?"

"Yoga instructor."

She snorts at him. “Uh huh.” But she stands up and offers her hand, smiling. “Casey McAllister.”

He shakes it. Her grip is firm and warm. He can see her noticing his scars and deciding not to comment on them. Stephen likes her right away.

“Stephen Strange,” he says. She smirks just a little at his name — most people do. He’s used to it by now.

She sits back down and gestures at the chair behind him, folds her hands together on top of her desk. “How can I help you Mr. Strange?”

He settles into the chair carefully, wrapping his coat around his belly — it’s getting hard to hide, especially when he’s sitting. The coat helps. Detective McAllister makes no comment, but he can feel her eyes on him, trying to figure him out. _Good luck_ , he thinks.

"I'm working for Susan Reed. She asked me to look into her daughter’s disappearance.”

“Are you a private investigator, too, Mr. Strange?”

“Not exactly… I just… help people with their problems. Sometimes.” _That sounds evasive as hell_ , he thinks, but there’s really no good way to explain what he does and not sound insane.

The detective just looks at him shrewdly. "Susan Reed. I remember her. Hard not to. Should've known there was a connection — you two dress alike."

"We belong to the same... yoga studio."

"Right." She knows he’s full of shit.

"Her daughter disappeared six years ago," he prompts.

Detective McAllister blows out a long breath, taps a finger on her desk. "Yep. I remember that case. Nineteen-year-old, took off with some boyfriend. Just... disappeared. Found nothing, of course. Case went nowhere. Everyone figured she vanished on purpose, you know. Her mom was a weird one — totally nuts. I could see a teenager running off.” She tips her head at him. “No offense, by the way."

"None taken."

She’s thinking again, pulling at her lip. "Young girl like that... maybe she just wanted to get away from her past. Live her life on her own terms..." Stephen can tell she’s not satisfied with that answer.

He isn’t either. “You think it might have been something else, though…”

She glances sharply at him. “You’re right. I do.”

She’s silent for a while, and Stephen can see her weighing how much she should tell him. “What the hell,” she says finally. “They’re old cases. I could never get anyone to give enough of a shit to throw more resources at them.”

“Cases?” She’s noticed the same thing, then — all the missing people. Too many.

“Right. There are several I think are related, going back a number of years. All disappearances, never any bodies recovered. Katherine Reed fits right into the same pattern. Young people, mostly — good kids, but they didn’t quite fit in. All disappeared under mysterious circumstances. No trace of any of them. But no signs of foul play, either.” She twists her chair around to dig into the filing cabinet behind her.

“Runaways?” He shrugs — it’s the most obvious conclusion, even if he doesn’t believe it.

She drops a well-worn stack of files on the desk. “That’s the thing — no real warning signs, no family problems, no abuse, drug use, nothing like that. They don’t fit the profile. And a few of them are weird.”

She searches through the stack for moment, holds up a file. “Katherine Reed,” she says, setting it in front of him.

Stephen opens the slim file and sifts through the papers inside. Some old photos of Katherine — same red hair, blue eyes, wide smile — a case report with few details, interviews with witnesses, her mother. Not much to go on. Nothing he doesn’t already have.

Detective McAllister pushes the rest of the stack toward him. He looks quickly through the first few — fifteen-year-old boy, five-year-old girl, seventeen-year-old girl, a thirteen-year-old, twenty, seventeen — smiling up at him from their school photos, all gone without a trace. He recognizes many of the names from his own searches, has them memorized, though a lot of these cases go back even further than the ones he’d found. Teenagers, kids, and then a seventy-five-year-old woman…

“Hang on,” he says. “This one’s weird.” He holds up the file.

She smiles at him. “Right. Mary Olsen. _Sister_ Mary Olsen,” she adds.

“She was a nun?”

“That’s right. Retired nun. Went for a walk in the woods. Never came back.”

“How does this one fit the pattern?”

She sighs again. “It doesn’t. It’s just a hunch I have.” Stephen thinks maybe he should trust her hunches.

He sorts further through the stack — way too many people missing out here in the middle of nowhere. _What happened to them? What did you do to them?_

“And this one…” He opens the file. A young priest, thirty-three, vanished last year. “Not part of the same church…?”

Detective McAllister huffs out a laugh. “No. That would’ve been too easy.”

The priest’s file is thicker than the rest. Stephen turns the pages for a minute. It’s obvious there was an actual investigation into this case. He looks back up at the detective.

“Almost had something,” she says wistfully. “Witness saw him talking to a woman — young, pretty — then getting into her car. Couldn’t get the license plate, but the car was an older model with some very distinctive damage. Light blue.” She sighs. “I spent a long time just driving around, looking for it.”

“Did you find it?”

She smiles ruefully. “Yeah, I think I did. In a little shithole called Hansen Lake, out near Willowemoc Forest. Weird place. No lake there, of course…”

Stephen knows it all too well — he’s been staring at the name for months, almost at the exact center of his ring of red pins.

“Managed to get a judge to sign a search warrant and everything. But there was nothing in the car that could be linked to the priest. No trace of him. And no one there was going to talk to me. I hit a dead end.”

“What do you think happened to them?” He knows what she’s going to say already, but he wants to hear it.

She smiles again, so sadly. “They’re dead. Dead and gone. No way we have that many missing with no sign of them for this long… No one’s coming back.”

Stephen nods. Yeah, it’s what he’s been thinking. They’re not coming back. Katherine Reed is never coming back. Still… he needs to stop this. _Somehow_. And there’s something here, some way to figure this out. But he can’t see what he wants to know — not yet. He needs more time to think. “Can I borrow these files for a while? I promise I’ll bring them back.”

Detective McAllister looks at him, pulling her lip again, considering. He knows he’s asking a lot of her — she has no reason to trust him at all, really.

“Fine.” She nods. “They’re old cases. Cold. I’m the only one who cares anymore… besides the families.” Her eyes turn sad again for a second. “So, go ahead. Bring them back when you’re done. Just let me know what you find. If you find anything,” she adds.

“All right.” He stands up and starts stacking the files together, puts Katherine Reed’s at the top.

Detective McAllister watches him. "When are you due?" She asks lightly.

He's surprised for just a second. "How do you know I'm not just fat?"

She smiles softly. "Honey, I've got four kids. And nobody holds onto their fat the way you've been holding that baby."

He doesn’t really know what to say to that. Is he really so obvious? Maybe he should consider not leaving the Sanctum until this is all over.

"I've made you uncomfortable,” she says, standing. “I'm sorry - I didn't mean to pry."

"No, it's... April. I'm due in April," he manages. It feels so bizarre to say it out loud.

“Well… congratulations.” She searches his face for a moment. “I think…”

He nods, looks down at the folders in his hands. “It’s… complicated.” _That pretty much sums it all up._

“It always is, honey.” she says. “It always is.”

 

****

 

He knows he should go to Wong with this, his suspicions. He really should. He knows there’s something here.

But he doesn’t have all of the pieces yet, and that makes him hesitate. He needs to know more. And Wong is so busy now — Stephen’s hardly seen him in the last few months, since their talk in the library when Wong gave him the ring — he’s either in London, acting as the interim Master there, or in Hong Kong doing… _who knows what?_

And now it definitely feels like Wong is avoiding him… Stephen knows it’s probably just another paranoid fantasy. And yet… it _feels_ real.

He’s so tired now, and his body so exhausted from lack of sleep, that even the worst nightmares don’t wake him anymore. He finds himself stuck in the same loop again — dying over and over, in so many different ways — until the morning sunlight finally wakes him. He supposes it’s his body’s way of rebelling against the abuse he’s putting it through. Finally shutting him down before something breaks.

But tonight is the worst — when his dreams about dying are all mixed up with… _the other thing._ He still has trouble just thinking about what happened without hyperventilating, so lately he’s been forcing himself to remember it. Go over the incident again and again, hoping he can control it. _The rape_ , he thinks. His mind wants to flinch away from the words, so he thinks it again. _When they raped me._

The little details are the worst — the bright light in his eyes, the fake grass, the feel of something pressing his legs to the ground, the intense cold filling his body, the inexorable rush of his own orgasm…

He chokes out a sob at the thought of it, rubs his hands over his face until he can think again.

He tries to focus on the dream that just woke him. It’s a mess of jumbled impressions and feelings — pain and pleasure and fear and, above all, absolute helplessness. That cold, dark veil sinking down on top of him, pulling him down into nothing. It’s always the same. He spends a few more minutes trying to analyze the dream, pin it down and make it manageable, but it’s just too painful to hold onto. He lets it go.

And he knows he’s not going to get any more sleep — not tonight — so he dresses and slowly climbs the stairs to the third floor, the cloak following along silently.

He steps up close to the huge window and stares out at the snow for a while, breath fogging the glass. It’s so bright outside — almost too bright for his eyes — even now in the dead of night, glowing white blanketing the street, distorting cars and trash cans and street signs under sparkling shrouds until they all look like they’re made of the same thing. _Nothing at all._

He rubs a hand over his belly, absently, thinking about what’s in there, growing. _A parasite_ , he thinks. That’s been easiest – to just dismiss it like that. Something living inside him, sucking the magic out of him, making him weak and sick.

He decides to approach it from a different perspective. _A baby_ , he thinks, _due in April_ , trying out the words in his head. _Not a real baby, though. Not his baby. And not a human baby._ He can’t quite make himself think that. Not yet. It won’t ever be his, anyway. _It’s theirs…_

He sighs and starts to turn away from the window, but he suddenly notices a different shape down in the street — a man out in the snow, standing in the alcove near the stoop across the street, staring back at the Sanctum. A man wearing… _robes?_ It’s too dark for him to tell. Too dark to really see anything in those shadows. _But… could it be?_

Stephen rushes down the stairs and out into the foyer, the cloak desperately trying to catch up with him. He unlocks and pulls the doors open as quickly as he can, sucking a swirling drift of snow into the Sanctum. He steps out into the quiet street, breath churning the air in front of him, searching up and down the block. His bootless feet sinking down into deep snow, and he doesn’t care.

But there’s nothing. _He’d been so sure… So sure it was him._ He could have sworn he’d seen him, but…

There’s no one there at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I took something out and then added it back in and everything got messed up... Check the new tags.
> 
> A road trip, and an old friend comes to visit. Let's earn that M rating, shall we? ;)

He makes a plan to go to Hansen's Lake himself and see what he can find. He's not making any progress sitting around the Sanctum, and it should be easy to just teleport out if there's any danger.

Unfortunately, he tells Christine about all of it during their next appointment. And she does not take it well.

"No. Absolutely not. I forbid it. As your doctor, and your friend."

"What? Why?"

Christine's busy fiddling with the ultrasound machine she's rolled into the little clinic room. She stabs at the keyboard a few more times, shakes her head in frustration and turns back to Stephen. Gives him her best _you're an idiot_ look.

"You're almost seven months pregnant with a demon baby and you want to just walk into a creepy little town in the middle of nowhere which — oh, _by the way_ — might be the home of a serial kidnapper who is also a murderer and…? _What?_ Ask him to confess? Get yourself killed? What is this going to accomplish?"

"Well, of course it sounds stupid when you say it like that."

"That's because it _is_ stupid, Stephen."

"Thanks."

"Look… Stephen." She picks up the probe. "You are — you _were_ — an amazing surgeon. And I'm sure you're a great wizard —"

" _Sorcerer."_

"Whatever. But you are not a detective. You've never done anything like this before. And now is a bad time to try it. A really bad time. And you promised you would listen to me." She adds. She gestures impatiently with the wand. "Now lay back."

"I promised to see a specialist if you insisted, but that's it. You can't just change our deal like this."

"Whatever," Christine says absently. She's already checked out of the argument.

They're not done talking about this — not even close — but he groans and lies down on the hard table.

Christine pushes his shirt up out of the way and squirts a generous glob of gel on his belly. At least she'd warmed it up this time, before he got in trouble. Christine starts moving the probe around slowly, eyes focused on the screen. She presses a few keys to make some adjustments, but Stephen can tell she's still not satisfied with what she's looking at.

"Turn it so I can see better," he says.

She shifts the monitor a little. "It's been a while since I've done this…" Christine's still frowning at the picture on the screen — a mess of black and gray pixels jumping around, nothing useful yet.

"Let me drive." He's always been better at this than she is. It's an art, really. She presses the wand into his hand with a sigh. The angle's a little awkward, but he moves it around slowly until a better image forms on the screen.

"Edges of the uterus," he says. "Looks normal." There's a narrower band of gray pixels just inside. "Placenta?" It's not really what he expected to see.

"It's a little thin," says Christine.

Stephen just grunts. He moves the wand down lower and around the circumference of his belly, propping himself up a little to reach. The picture on the screen is baffling. "No umbilical cord…?" At least, he can't find it.

And he's starting to formulate a theory about why it might be missing. Because maybe this baby doesn't require that kind of sustenance. Maybe magical energy is the only thing it really needs. It would also explain why the demons waited to make their deal with ancient sorcerers instead of just grabbing some poor unfortunate off the street — a regular person wouldn't be able to channel the amount of magical energy the baby would need to grow.

He presses the probe in a little harder trying to increase the depth of field. And there it is. _The baby._

Something's off. It's the right shape, at least — he can see the outline of a tiny foot, a leg, then an arm, a head and face with human-looking features. A little hand darts in and out of view on the screen as the baby wiggles around. And, yet…

"No bones," Christine whispers, and she's right. The brighter outlines of tiny bones that Stephen expected to see aren't there. No organs, either. There's just a strange undefined field of gray pixels inside the tiny body. In fact, the baby's image is strangely blurry, like the sound waves are reflecting off of something less substantial than real flesh.

"Do you think that's… _normal?_ " Christine sounds doubtful.

Stephen just shrugs. "Demon baby, remember." Who knows what's normal?

They both watch the baby moving around for a few minutes, all waving arms and jerking legs. Stephen's surprised he can't actually feel any of it — she's so active.

 _She,_ he thinks _._ After trying and failing to find a tiny penis, he's decided to think of her as a girl. And even if he's just forcing his own human notions of gender on her, it feels better than thinking of her as _it_.

 

****

 

They come to an agreement — Stephen can go to Hansen's Lake as long as Christine comes along.

He's actually pretty okay with that — he finds it easier to think when he has someone to talk to. And he enjoys Christine's company. Besides, he'll look less suspicious walking into town if he has someone as normal-looking as Christine to counter his creepiness.

Unfortunately, Christine insists on driving there. It seems ridiculous when they can just step through a dimensional gateway and be anywhere in seconds, but Christine won't do it. Stephen has to accept that she's just not comfortable with the whole magic thing yet.

So they take her car. She still has the same shitty Ford she'd driven as an intern, but she's maintained it impeccably, and the damn thing still runs.

Of course, he still barely fits inside, even with the seat pushed as far back as it will go. Stephen manages to fold himself into the passenger seat, but just barely. And, despite the awkward position, he starts to nod off before they've even gotten out of the city. Maybe this wasn't such a terrible idea — he could use a few hours of sleep. He feels a little guilty, though, making Christine drive the whole way in silence. Her fault for wanting to drive in the first place.

Christine seems to sense his struggle to stay awake. "If you want to sleep, its fine. I don't mind. I like it when you shut up for a while." She glances over at him, smiling. "Anyway, you really need it. Doctor's orders."

He closes his eyes and falls asleep before he even remembers to say thank you.

 

****

 

She wakes him up when they stop for gas. And then she insists that he eat something, so they stop inside the busy rest stop and order greasy fast food.

People are staring openly at him now — and he has to admit, he does look odd — so Stephen stares back, glaring until even the worst offenders get uncomfortable and avert their eyes.  

He's just finished staring down some twenty-something douchebag with a trucker's hat and a bunch of tribal tattoos — the man had lingered by their table a little too long, like he'd wanted to say something to the two of them. And Stephen almost welcomes it, knowing he could utterly destroy this little asshole. He wouldn't even need to use magic to do it. But, Stephen's scowl is enough to send him scurrying away instead, clutching at his girlfriend's hand.

Stephen snorts with satisfaction and sits back. Christine just watches him with a little smirk on her face.

"What?" he demands.

"Nothing." She smiles and eats another fry. "You're just really getting into this whole 'scary wizard' thing, aren't you?"

" _Sorcerer_. And I've always been scary."

"Yeah. You were always good at making interns cry."

He smiles at her, remembering. _Good times_ , he thinks. He's pretty good at making the new recruits cry, too.

Christine wraps up the rest of her food and pushes it out of the way. _Uh, oh, serious talk coming_ , he thinks.

She fiddles with the straw in her cup, but doesn't actually drink anything. "So... what's supposed to happen next? You give birth and then... what? The demons come and take the baby? And then they… get rid of your extra parts?"

"Something like that." Stephen shifts around to get comfortable — sitting for a long time is hell on his back and legs now. "Wong says he's already arranged everything." Though, as usual, he hasn't really let Stephen in on a lot of the details. "At Kamar-Taj." He takes a sip of his drink. "In Nepal."

He can see her tense up at that.

He smiles. "Are you doubting the quality of medical care one can receive at a magical cult compound in Nepal, Doctor Palmer?" he asks lightly.

"No…" She shakes her head, smirking. " _No_. Well… a little. It's just that… I'm absolutely sure we have the best people here in New York. I'd feel better if you were here."

"If anything goes wrong, I can be at Metro-General in a matter of seconds." He grins at her. "Magic, remember?"

"Oh, yeah…" She's quiet for a minute, smile fading. "I'd have to admit you through the ER, though. I'm not doing what we did last time. I won't do that again." She looks over at him, checking his face. "And… some people you know would be there. Would you be okay with that?"

He thinks about it. Would it bother him? Does he really care what his former colleagues think of him now? He used to think they were all idiots — an unenlightened part of him still thinks they're idiots. And they never really liked him anyway, probably because of the whole idiot thing.

"I'm fine with it," he decides. That part of his life is over, anyway. And this is just another step in the process of letting go. He's moved on. "Just keep West away from me." _The biggest idiot of all,_ Stephen thinks, _although maybe he should give him another chance..._

"Okay." Christine seems satisfied with this arrangement. And Stephen just hopes it doesn't come to that.

 

****

 

They stop two more times so he can take a piss, and then they leave the highway for smaller roads.

The rolling hills and smaller farms have gradually given way to denser forests of deciduous trees, tiny green buds just beginning to decorate the bare winter branches. There are houses and towns — all small but busy with people and cars — and then longer and longer stretches of nothing but trees. After a while, they barely pass anyone else on the road.

Christine keeps up a steady stream of small talk as she drives. _Fear of silence_ , Stephen thinks. _A major Christine character flaw._ He tries to hold up his end of the conversation but it's just too tedious and, anyway, he's too distracted with more pressing concerns. It gets harder and harder to concentrate on what Christine's saying the closer they get to their destination. To the area inside the pins.

 _Something_. He can definitely feel something out here, growing stronger as they drive.

Christine is saying something about Doctor West and Tracey, the new nurse in the ER, and how they're _blah blah blah_ … when Stephen suddenly says, "Stop!"

Christine jumps slightly, but manages to pull the car safely over to the side of the road. "Okay…?"

This particular spot looks like every other part of the forest they've already driven through. But there's definitely something here that's _wrong. So, so wrong…_

"Just… I need to check something." He's not sure how to explain what he's feeling. This is the place, though. It doesn’t feel exactly like magic, but it's strong, whatever it is.

He opens the door and steps out. It's chilly out here — cold and damp despite onset of spring, colder than it felt this morning in New York. The wind pushes the upper branches of the trees, swaying them gently. The soft clicking reminds him of old bones rubbing together.

_Ignore it. It's not important. It's nothing._

He sticks his hands in his pockets and closes his eyes, trying to find the source of the energy.

Christine steps up to him. "Stephen? What —"

"This way." He strides off into the forest, away from the road and towards… _something_. Christine huffs and tries to keep up with his longer legs.

Hiking through the forest is not too difficult, at least, even if they're not really prepared. Everything is still winter-barren and most of the snow is gone — only a few stubborn patches remain in areas of deep shadow.

They walk on in silence for a few minutes, Stephen in the lead, until Christine says quietly, "What's that?"

Stephen looks up. He'd been so busy staring around his belly at his feet that he hasn't noticed the building right in front of them, just through a thick stand of pines.

The church — more of a small chapel, really — wouldn't have looked out of place in a theme park, Stephen thinks. It's all gray stone with bizarre gothic filigree, leading up to a peaked slate roof. Tall stained-glass windows in garish colors dot the sides of the building and gleam over the heavy front doors, looking ridiculously overdramatic. The whole thing looks completely out of place sitting in a forest in rural New York — like someone's idealized version of a quaint European church taken to the extreme.

And that's it — Stephen peers through the trees to make sure he's not missing anything — but there's nothing else, just the church and a dirt road leading off into the forest.

They both just stare at it for a few minutes.

"Uh…," Christine starts. "That's…"

"What?"

"Weird, right?"

He doesn't say anything, just pushes through the trees towards the building. This is definitely the source of the energy he's been sensing. He can feel a steady low humming coming from it, rattling his teeth and setting his nerves on edge.

They both stop and look around. Stephen tries to ignore the incessant buzzing and focus on the details. He spins around a few times, thinking. _And that's… definitely odd._

 He turns back to where Christine is examining the doors. "Notice anything strange here?"

"Just you." She grins at him over her shoulder.

"Haven’t heard that one before…" he mutters. He walks around the side of the building so he can see the back. "But, seriously… No parking lot. And no sign that cars have ever been parked here."

"Maybe it's abandoned."

He thinks about it. "It's too well maintained. Look at these doors." He gestures at them — wood polished and gleaming, iron hinges and pulls free of rust. The whole church looks old and well-used, but there are no signs of decay. "Someone's been using this place." _For something…_

Christine shrugs. "Maybe they all walk to church here. It's a small town…"

Stephen makes a noncommittal sound. Even ignoring the bizarre energy, this place doesn't feel right — like it's not a real church. He's gotten used to being aware of churches and other places that are sacred to people — how they feel different from other places — now that he's in tune to the energy surrounding him. They give off their own unique signature — the impressions of hundreds or even thousands of people, coming together throughout the years for a singular purpose.

That feeling is absent here. And it's odd. Even an old church, one that's been abandoned for a while, should still feel familiar. But not like this.

"And look at these stumps." He gestures to the cleared area around the church. "These were cut recently. And the ground here is still torn up like they've just finished construction."

Christine wanders over. "Huh. They do look new." She looks up at the building next to them — field stone walls dotted with lichens and moss stretching up to stained glass windows. "But the church is old, right? Maybe it got overgrown and they've done some restoration."

"Maybe…" That would be the logical answer, but still…

"I need to see the inside," he says. He steps up to the front doors and pushes.

"Stephen, maybe we should —"

But the doors open easily, silently. Stephen glances back at Christine, who looks worried, shrugs and steps inside.

It's dark in here — the only light streaming in through the stained-glass and pooling in multi-colored splashes on the floor. But it's enough to see that the interior is just as absurd as the outside. A few rows of wooden pews that look almost like an afterthought. High gothic arches of stone. An oversized stone podium. Polished stone floor. Limestone or granite — Stephen's not an expert. Either way, it must have cost a fortune to build. And he's more sure now than before that this place has never been a church — there's just no trace of it anywhere.

There is something, though. That odd vibration he'd sensed outside — it's so much louder in here, almost overwhelming. A low steady thrumming that he knows he's not hearing with his ears, at all. It's hard to concentrate, with that constant feeling in his head.

"Stephen, do you see this?"

Christine is busy examining something on the wall. He walks over and stoops down a little to get a good look. There are faint lines on the stone, painted in a color meant to blend almost exactly. He can only see them when he tips his head in just the right way, letting the light reflect off of the paint's surface. Complicated lines, like a mandala. _A ward._

He looks around at the rest of the church. Now that he knows what he's looking for, they're obvious — painted on all the walls, about four feet apart.

"They're magic. _Spells_."

Christine seems doubtful. "These are just drawings, Stephen. They don’t look like magic…"

He puts his hand out, brushes the lines on the wall, presses his palm against the stone. It's oddly warm and he can actually feel a strong vibration under his fingers, like an electric current is running through building somehow.

"They're active." He's quiet for a while, thinking. The magic from the wards isn't very strong, just a faint buzzing, but underneath there's something else. Something much bigger. Something he's never felt before… The source of the thrumming. _The church, itself?_ _But how?_

Christine looks at him curiously. She walks over and puts her hand next to his. "I don't feel anything," she says after a few moments.

Stephen looks up at the wall, then steps back and turns around slowly. Something else, now that he's aware of it. _There_. Under the pews running down the center of the church. He walks over and starts pushing one out of the way. The heavy bench groans against the floor, shockingly loud.

" _Stephen_ ," Christine hisses. "What are you doing?"

He doesn't answer. Just kneels down awkwardly next to the lines painted on the floor. It's a huge ward, easily five feet across, and more intricate than the smaller ones on the walls.  He touches the edge of it. Power jumps into his hand like little shocks.

"This one's on, too."

"What do they mean?"

"I'm not sure..." He's still thinking about it. Some of the sigils are familiar and some are variations he's never seen before. And some... just don't look like they'd do anything — he can’t figure out why anyone would use them. He looks up at Christine again. "Do you have your phone?"

"Yeah, of course, but I don't think I can get any reception out here..."

"No. I need some pictures of these. If you can get them."

"Oh. Right, yeah —" She starts to fumble her phone out of her pocket.

They both startle as the back door of the church suddenly opens. A man and a woman step in, hang back in the shadows.

Christine quickly helps Stephen to his feet and they back away from the new arrivals.

The man stays by the door, but the woman steps forward into the light. She's in her mid-twenties, maybe older, with close-cropped auburn hair, and cold blue eyes. She smiles tightly at them. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, we were just... just...um, looking at..." Christine stammers wildly, before looking desperately at Stephen.

"Just looking around the church," Stephen finishes. He tries for a genuine smile. "It's very interesting."

The woman walks slowly towards them. Her eyes settle briefly on Christine before dismissing her. Then her focus shifts to Stephen, searching gaze moving up and down over his body. A strange smile forms on her lips and her eyes are cold and knowing.

Stephen doesn't like what he sees in her eyes. It's the same cold, blue stare he remembers from his experiment with the necklace, empty and calculating. Whoever this woman is, she's definitely connected to the disappearance of Katherine Reed.

"Yes," she says slowly. "Our little church is interesting. _Very_ interesting." She smiles that knowing smile again, like they aren't in on her joke.

Stephen decides to play along. "I was just wondering when it was built?"

"1827. Isn't that right, Michael?" She turns to the man behind her. He nods tersely, and she looks back at Stephen, grins. "That's right, 1827. It really is unique, isn't it?" Her eyes search his face intently, looking for something.

She's absolutely toying with them. Stephen feels a tiny flash of something at the edge of his consciousness — a sensation of the color red, so familiar somehow. But after a second it's gone, and he can't tell if he'd just imagined it. "Yeah, um… very unique."

That answer seems to satisfy her, somehow. She gives a tiny little nod and smiles again. And, this time, she almost looks relieved. _Definitely involved_ , Stephen thinks.

"Well. It's very flattering that you're so interested in our little church, but… this really is private property and I'm going to have to ask you to leave." She still has that satisfied little smirk on her face.

 _I'm going to figure you out_ , Stephen thinks. _Then, maybe, you won't be smiling._ All he knows right now is that she's dangerous.

The man by the back doors steps closer, as if that's his cue.

Stephen puts his hand on Christine's elbow. "We were just leaving, anyway. Sorry, to uh… to bother you." He turns her around and they walk quickly towards the front doors. Christine throws him a questioning look, but thankfully says nothing. He looks back once they're outside, but the man and the woman are still standing in the middle of the church, staring at them, not speaking.

"Come on," he says and pulls Christine along. He knows he can use his sling ring if things get serious, but he'd rather not. And he knows Christine wouldn't like it.

They hike back through the forest and even manage to find the car. And nobody follows them.

 

****

 

"It's not old," he says when they're safely back in the car and pulling away from the church.

"What?" Christine nervously checks the rearview mirror to make sure no one's following them still. She lets out a shaky sigh of relief when they've finally pulled out onto the main road.

"The church. It's not old."

"How can you tell?"

Stephen thinks about how to explain it. "Old places and things have a sort of… memory to them. The energy of everyone who's lived there or died there, or touched something a lot, or cared about it… all of those feelings and thoughts leave an impression on a place. A record of everything that's come before. And I didn't feel any of that back there. I felt something else… something odd. But it wasn't that. There's no way that church was built in 1827."

"It looked old to me," Christine says.

"I think it's a disguise, or… some kind of misdirection. I don't know."

He's actually not sure what it means yet. Stephen slumps back in his seat and blows out a long breath, frustrated. Does he really know anything more than he did? He considers the weird energy he'd felt in the church — that low, steady thrum. Not the weak fizzing of the spells on the walls. Not like anything he's ever felt before. But something powerful, something hidden just under the surface…

And that woman… She's a part of it, he knows. But a part of what? The kidnappings and murders, for sure… But why? And how is the church connected? Because he's absolutely sure it is… It bothers him that he can't figure it out.

Christine is still talking. "That woman was super creepy." She gives a little shudder. "The way she looked at you…? Weird as hell."

He just grunts in response.

"Stephen? You okay?" Christine glances over at him, trying to decide why he's so quiet all of a sudden. "Do you still want to go to the town? Hansen's Lake, right? It's getting late, but we could…"

He shakes his head slowly, considering. "No need. This was the place I needed to see." He's sure of it now. He just needs to figure out what it means.

He runs his fingers restlessly along his beard, stares out the window at passing trees. Christine's still shooting him nervous glances. He sighs. "I'm fine. I just need to think for a while."

Stephen knows she doesn't like the silence between them. She never did — it was one of the reasons she ended their relationship. One among many.

Christine clears her throat and tries again. "I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of those drawings. The spells."

"Not a problem." He doesn't really feel like talking right now, but he supposes he can get over that for Christine, work harder at not being an asshole. He gives her his best attempt at a reassuring smile. "I've already got them." He taps his head. "Up here."

At least that's something he can work with.

 

****

 

He's in the library, late, just beginning to nod off over a book, when the wards briefly flare to life. He jumps up, heart pounding, but they fade out a few seconds later.  
  
_Odd_ , he thinks. _They aren't supposed to work like that_. They should stay on continuously when there’s a threat, otherwise what’s the point? He searches his memory for any mistakes he might have made in his spellcasting, but he can't think of anything obvious.

Now that he’s fully awake, he can just make out a faint knocking from somewhere downstairs. The wards blink on one more time and then gutter out, as if unsure whether the visitor is a friend or a foe. He glances quickly at the clock on the wall — three in the morning — and wonders what sort of business anyone could have here at this hour. And in this weather — the wind is rattling the old casement windows in their frames and blowing bursts of sleet against the glass.

He prepares himself to face the threat — sifting through hundreds of defensive and offensive spells — picturing the gestures in his mind and readying them for later. The cloak, too, is expecting a fight — it flies out from wherever it’s been hiding and settles firmly on his shoulders, red fabric undulating dangerously like a snake.

He steps carefully down the huge staircase, wishing each step didn’t creak so much. _Maybe there’s a spell for that — he’ll have to look it up later_. No sounds now except clocks ticking, the creaking of the old building, and the wind howling outside.

_The wind…_

"Focus, _damn it_ ," he mutters.

He’s reached the second-floor landing when the knocking starts again. _Back door, through the kitchen._ Now he’s sure this must be some sort of attack. Bleecker Street’s just too busy, even at this hour to approach the Sanctum unnoticed, while the alley is dark and empty...   _But why knock?_

He reaches the back door and peers through the glass. There’s a man’s shape in the alley, back in the shadows — familiar in his robes — and then he turns around.

" _Mordo_ ," Stephen says, and finally lets out the breath he’s been holding. It’s been over six months since he’s seen his friend — since Mordo left the order — and he can’t help feeling relieved and concerned at the same time. He opens the door and braces himself against the wind.

Mordo steps carefully into the light pooling on the back steps, but he doesn’t come any closer. "Stephen," he says, carefully. There’s an odd tension and formality in him that sets Stephen on edge once again.

"What’s wrong?" he asks. _Something. Something is very wrong._

"Can’t a man visit a good friend? Maybe his only friend," he muses. "Am I no longer welcome here?" He smiles, but his eyes are sad. He steps forward carefully and Stephen can see that he’s no longer wearing his familiar moss-green robes. These are black on black.

"Of course, you’re welcome here," Stephen says automatically. But he’s not so sure now.

_There’s something different about him. Something not right._

"What’s wrong?" Stephen repeats.

"Nothing. Nothing is wrong." His words are light. But Stephen can see something in his eyes — he’s so sad, and yet there’s a determination there, something dark that he doesn’t recognize in his friend. Mordo’s steps toward him are wooden, like those of a man approaching his doom.

Stephen tenses up and takes an involuntary step back towards the Sanctum. The wind whips the cloak around him, and he shivers.

"Maybe we can talk inside," he suggests, trying to break the awful tension between them. "Have some tea…" Anything to get out of the dark… and the wind.

"I would like to," Mordo says, and there’s real regret in his voice, "but your wards are too good."

"My wards —?" He doesn’t understand.

Mordo steps closer, and his eyes are so deep and dark. Stephen can’t look away. He feels slow and stupid again, like he’s one step away from understanding something important. The cloak billows up in a warning. _But Mordo is a friend — it must know that_ , he thinks.

Mordo reaches out and grabs Stephen’s arm. Light and pain flash just behind his eyes, sharp and bright. He suddenly can’t think or breathe. _What!?_

And then the other man snatches his hand back as if he’s been burned, and the pain is gone, just as suddenly.

"What’s —? What is that?" Mordo gasps. His eyes are wide and wild. "You’re _changed_ … somehow. What has changed?"

Stephen tries to stay calm, but this is so bizarre. He feels completely and hopelessly lost. He shakes his head and tries to control his breathing. "Uh…" And he’s not sure how to answer that question. "Not much… has changed, except…" Telling the truth seems easiest. "I did somehow manage to get knocked up by some kind of elemental demon, so…" he finishes lamely.

"Knocked up…?" Mordo says the words as though he can’t quite parse their meaning. His eyes finally fix on Stephen’s body, and how has he not noticed _that_ yet? He looks stricken. And, yet, there’s recognition there, too. _This isn’t really a surprise_ , Stephen thinks. He can see the wheels turning in Mordo’s head.

He tentatively reaches a hand out toward Stephen’s middle. "May I?" he asks.

"Uh, sure —?" _After what just happened, this is probably a bad idea_ , he thinks. _No, it’s definitely a bad idea._

Before he can change his mind, Mordo rests his hand gently over the swelling in Stephen’s belly. And just holds it there, his eyes closed in concentration. Stephen tries not to move or breathe too hard. The pain doesn’t return — this is just Mordo touching him. _What the hell?_

Eventually, he clears his throat. "This is weird, right?"

Mordo finally looks up at him. "A bit. Yes," he admits. And this time, the smile reaches his eyes. He drops his hand, and all of the odd tension in his body seems to disappear with that motion. His shoulders dip as if he’s been defeated somehow. "I think…" Mordo looks nervously at the ground and then back up at Stephen. He’s come to some sort of decision. "I would like to come inside and have that tea. If the offer still stands."

"I thought you said you couldn’t because of the wards?" Stephen’s confused again. He feels like maybe he should be used to that by now.

"They will not be a problem now," Mordo says, and sighs. "They are very good wards. I doubt that I or anyone else at Kamar-Taj could do better." He’s suddenly serious again. "And you should add more of them. Soon."

 

****

 

They spend the next hour or so sitting in Stephen’s office, drinking tea and just talking about life at Kamar-Taj and all of the people there that Mordo hasn’t seen for so long. _Home_ , he thinks. And it’s been so long since he’s had someone to just… talk to. It feels right.

Stephen begins to wonder if he’d just imagined all of the awkwardness from before.

The conversation lulls for a moment, and Mordo gets up to look more closely at the board Stephen’s been using to tack up the information about the disappearances. "What’s this?" He takes a contemplative sip of his tea.

"Oh, just something I’m trying to figure out." It might be a good idea to get a second opinion — he’s stumped, anyway.

Stephen explains what he’s come up with so far: the spatial pattern of the disappearances, the timing…

"These are the ones I could find that fit the pattern." He gestures at the red pins surrounding the emptiness at the center of the map — names, dates of each case carefully labelled. "But the thing I can’t figure out is why?" He sighs. "Why these people? As far as I can tell, they have nothing in common."

Mordo gives the map one more hard look, before sitting back down. He’s silent for a moment. "They all vanished around the second week of March? And September?"

Stephen eases himself back into his chair with a groan, rubs his belly. "That’s right."

Mordo is silent for a moment, thinking. "Important dates, those," He tips his cup at the board. "Powerful." He gives Stephen a meaningful look.

"The equinoxes, yeah."

"And what’s at the center of these disappearances?" He points to the blank space between the red pins. "I assume you’ve been here?"

 _Ground zero_ , Stephen thinks. "A village. More of a trailer park, actually. And, a church…" He reaches over to sort through his papers, hands the drawings he’s made of the symbols across to Mordo. "These were all over the walls. And this big one" — he taps at the drawing on top — "in the center of the floor."

Mordo squints down at the paper. "A ward for… containment…"

Stephen nods.

"And these smaller ones…" Mordo frowns. "Concealment —?"

"That’s my best guess, too." Stephen leans back in his chair, frustrated, rubs his belly absently.

They think in silence for a while, Mordo turning the drawings around in his hands, tracing the lines with a finger.

"The symbology and craft of these wards is… amateurish. Crude. I find it hard to believe that they have a very strong effect, in themselves." Mordo says finally. "Depending on what they were meant to contain, they may require an outside power source to activate them… and to restore their effectiveness, from time to time."

"You’re talking about a sacrifice."

Mordo nods. "That’s one way to power a ritual. A crude and… _distasteful_ way." He frowns down at the drawings again, sets them back on the desk. "Do you have any information on the people who have disappeared?"

"Yeah, hold on." He leans over again, searching for the stack of files. He hands them across.

Mordo glances through them, turning the pages slowly, frowning. He picks out two of the files and holds them up, a question in his eyes.

"The nun and the priest," Stephen says. "Yeah, those are odd."

"Not so odd, when you think about it…" Mordo’s voice trails off and Stephen can tell he’s debating how much he should say. He looks up at Stephen again, eyes troubled. "Virgin sacrifices."

Stephen can’t help the laugh that escapes. "Uh. That has to be bullshit, right?" Mordo obviously doesn’t think so. "Please tell me it doesn’t work like that…" _Jesus_ , he thinks, _Magic is so fucking stupid sometimes._

Mordo shrugs. "It may be bullshit, as you say, but it does work. For reasons I do not understand, the energy one can obtain from a virgin sacrifice is much greater than for… most other types of sacrifices."

"Is there some kind of — I don’t know? — sacrifice flow chart somewhere that you consult when you need to know how to power your evil ritual?"

Mordo manages a smile at that. "Yes, actually."

Stephen concedes the point. "Okay, then…"

Mordo glances back at the board again, considering. "But what these were meant to conceal or contain…? I cannot guess." He pauses. "However, I would wager that these murders will continue. Indefinitely. Until something changes."

 After a few moments, his gaze returns to Stephen, warm eyes direct. "The important question is… What are you going to do about it? _Master_ Strange." He raises his eyebrows a bit, waiting.

Stephen dips his head in acknowledgment. "That is a good question…" He’s been thinking about it.

 _What is he going to do about it? What can he do about it?_ He feels so limited right now — stuck in this dimension and low on power — he’s tempted to wait until he’s done with the whole pregnancy thing. He still has so little to go on. But he knows the equinox is approaching quickly. They’ll need another sacrifice, and that means another missing kid. He’s not sure it can wait. He’ll have to act.

Mordo’s looking at him, waiting, so he says, "I can’t do what you’re asking of me." He pauses. "I’ll try to stop them. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll give my own life if I have to, but…" He shrugs. "I can’t kill another person. It’s just… not something I can do. I can’t do it and keep… being who I am." He wishes he could make Mordo understand. He has to find his own way to fix this.

If there’s any hint of disappointment in the other man’s eyes, he covers it quickly. He just nods, like this is exactly what he expected Stephen to say. The same old ground between them.

"Have you discussed this with Wong?"

"No," Stephen admits. "Not yet."

Mordo nods again, but stays silent. His eyes drift back over to Stephen’s desk and fall on Wong’s silver ring. Stephen remembers that he took it off before his last appointment with Christine and forgot to put it back on again — it must have gotten lost under papers and books as he worked.

Mordo looks at it intently for a moment before folding it up in his hand. He squeezes his eyes shut in concentration.

"It's just a ring." Stephen wonders what Mordo's sensing that he couldn't.

Finally, the other man opens his eyes, considering. "You should wear this," he says, handing it back to Stephen. "It is just a ring, but… It's important."

"Mind telling me why?" Has everyone started speaking in tongues, or has he just become stupid? It's really starting to get annoying.

Mordo shakes his head solemnly. "I cannot. But, please, indulge me… wear it. Do not take it off."

He seems so deadly serious that Stephen gives up and slips it back over his head. "Fine. You win."

 

****

 

Later, they've run out of anything to talk about that isn't painful, and a long silence falls between them. Stephen realizes that this might be his only chance — _his last chance_ — to change Mordo's mind. It's a dangerous topic to bring up, but he can't help but try.

"You should come back," Stephen says softly. "We need you. _I_ need you." He smiles a little. "Even Wong needs you, in his own way."

Mordo snorts a little at that.

"The world needs you," Stephen adds, quietly.

Mordo’s smile fades. "I wish that I could come back." He looks away. "But I must find my own way to… save the world." That sadness is back in his voice, and Stephen can feel Mordo shutting him out once again. He looks lost for a moment. "I have to go," he says, finally, rising from his seat, face turning blank with determination.

Stephen gets up slowly. That odd tension is back between them. He wishes he knew what it meant. All he knows is that his friend is slipping away again.

"Mordo, wait… You can't just give this all up…"

"I’m sorry, Stephen." Mordo strides out of the study, heading for the doors.

Stephen rushes to catch up to him, grabs at his arm. He can’t let him go — this is his only chance to make him understand, to make him come back. "Mordo, wait… _Damn it!"_

The other man shrugs him off roughly, pulls the door open. Cold air swirls in. "Enough, Strange… You were always so arrogant…" He shakes his head, grimacing, and turns to go.

Stephen manages to get in front of him, raises his hands. "Please, just listen to me…" _If they could just talk about this, he’s sure he could convince him…_

Mordo tries to push past him, but Stephen grabs his arms hard, and pulls him back into the Sanctum. "Will you stop being such a stubborn ass and just _listen!_ "

The annoyance in Mordo’s face suddenly twists into rage, and he slams Stephen against the wall, forearm pressing into his neck, cutting off his air. "No! I already know what you will say. And I am done. It is over. I cannot come back. If you value our friendship, whatever remains of it at all, then you will respect my decision. Let me go!"

And Mordo is so strong — he's always been so strong. Stephen scrabbles at his arm, pulls at his sleeve trying to push him back, but he can't get any leverage. They stand that way — locked together, breathing heavily — for what seems like an eternity. Until the tension shifts again. Mordo's face changes — the rage slipping away. And then he slowly, carefully moves his other hand to Stephen’s belly. He’s so very gentle all of a sudden, like he’s afraid to startle him, even as the pressure of his arm increases against Stephen’s trachea. And Stephen stops struggling. He can’t fight his friend. _He won’t_. And he can’t… he can’t figure out what’s happening…

The baby kicks against Mordo’s hand and Stephen gasps — it’s the first time he’s felt her move.

Mordo drops his face into Stephen’s neck, his warm breath making him shiver. "She’s very strong," Mordo says quietly. "And getting stronger."

Mordo shifts against him again, sliding his hand up over Stephen’s racing heart, pressing into him. "And you are very weak."

He looks back up at Stephen and his eyes are so dark. Stephen can’t look away. He can feel his heart beating way too fast under Mordo’s hand. And the other man breathing hot against his cheek. He wants Mordo to come back, but not like this… He wants…

"It would hardly be fair…" Mordo’s voice is light, almost amused. "Or worth it…" His face is twisted by grief, and something else... Something like hunger…

The wards abruptly blaze to life once again. And this time they burn with dangerous intensity, bright incandescence chasing away the darkness in Mordo’s eyes. The cloak comes flying out of the study, ready to defend its master. Stephen barely manages to hold up a hand in time, stopping it.

"No," Mordo says at last, looking warily at the energy gathering around them. "Not tonight."

He pulls his arm away from Stephen’s neck, and Stephen slumps against the wall, trying to catch his breath. _This isn’t the man he knows…_

Mordo stops on the threshold and turns back to him. "I will see you again. In a couple of months." To Stephen, the words sound like a threat.

And Mordo steps through the doors and disappears into the storm.

 

****

 

That night, he dreams about something different.

He's not dying, just lying on his side in his bed, and someone is there beside him, pressed up against his back. Someone warm and solid and alive.

 _Christine_ , he thinks.

But the arm that wraps around his waist is not Christine's. It's too dark against his pale skin — a man's arm. _Mordo_. He knows it instantly with the unerring conviction of dream logic. _But why would Mordo be in his bed?_

And then he knows. In the same instant he realizes that he's totally naked, the other man's hand reaches down and curls around him _._ He's already hard. _Oh, it's that kind of dream_ , he thinks. He moans and moves his own hand to join the other on his cock. They slide along his hot flesh as one — Stephen's own useless fingers like ghosts against Mordo's stronger ones. It feels so good, he's not sure how long he can last like this — pleasure is already sparking in his groin, spreading out through his body.

And just when he's sure he's about to come, the other man rolls him onto his back, settles between his spread legs. And Stephen doesn't like it. It reminds him of… of… He's not sure what. He feels too exposed like this. _Vulnerable_. He tries to turn his head to the side, but Mordo grabs his chin gently and forces his head back.

"I want you to see what I've become," he says, and his eyes are just as dark as Stephen remembers.

Stephen looks at Mordo above him and then down at his body. He's not pregnant. Everything seems just as it's always been and yet… Mordo grips him under the backs of his knees and pushes his legs up, sinks into him easily, filling him. Stephen's not sure how or where and he doesn't care. It feels too good, and not like before — Mordo is hot inside of him and solid and real, instead of cold and insubstantial. And this time, the pleasure that gradually rises in him is from the friction between their bodies and not some magic trick pulling it from his mind. Stephen hooks his long legs behind Mordo's back, and Mordo reaches for his cock again, stroking it firmly.

"You're so weak," Mordo whispers above him. "It's hardly fair…"

"What's hardly fair…?" He can barely get the words out. Something is wrong with him.

He can feel his heart slowing, breath quickening as his body tries desperately to replace the oxygen in his blood. Something is pulling the energy from him — not just a little, but everything he has. Everything he needs to live.

 _The baby? But he's not pregnant…_ _There is no baby. Not here._ _Not now._

He looks at the man above him. Mordo is staring down at him, an expression of bliss on his face, sweat glistening on his forehead, muscles tense and straining as he fucks him.

And Stephen just knows _. Mordo…_ _He's the one doing this to him. Sapping his strength… Taking everything he has._

And it feels so good that he doesn't care. He doesn't care.

The edges of his vision fill with black specks, creeping slowly in until he can't focus on anything but Mordo's dark eyes. _Blood pressure too low_ , he thinks, vaguely. _Losing consciousness._ He wants to reach up and touch Mordo's face, but his arms are too heavy to lift. He can't even move his legs anymore — Mordo lets go of his cock to support him completely, while he pushes into him hard and fast. And Stephen doesn't even need it anymore because he's already there.

His orgasm seems to stretch on forever, drawing the last of the strength from his body. He pants through it, desperate for air that offers no relief. And still he's drifting slowly into the darkness, growing weaker even as the pleasure breaks over him like a wave, washing him back down into nothingness as it recedes. He knows he's dying, and he doesn't care.

And, at the end, there's nothing but the darkness in Mordo's eyes.

He wakes up, breathing heavily, but not panicking. Not yet.

The dream had felt so real, though. He quickly checks around with all of his senses to make sure he's still alone, that Mordo hasn't come back and somehow gotten inside. The wards are quiet. The Sanctum is quiet. Even the howling wind from earlier has settled down.

A dark shape startles him for a moment before he realizes it's just the cloak, hovering rigidly in the corner. There's no one else. He's alone in his bed. _Just another fucked up dream_ , he thinks. _An extremely fucked up dream._

As the fear subsides, he realizes suddenly that he's hard. _Shit._

He cups himself through his thin pajamas and blows out a harsh breath. He feels oddly swollen and... _wet_ between his legs and he shifts restlessly against the bed. The friction is good, but it's also _wrong_ , and he doesn't want to think about it.

Feeling like a freak, he slips his hand into his pants, runs his fingers lightly over his cock and then down behind his balls. He _is_ wet, but he can't bring himself to touch there, he just… he _can't_. He moves his fingers back to where it's safer instead, closing them around his cock and groaning low in his throat. He's already right on the edge, and it only takes a few quick and painful strokes, thinking carefully about nothing — _definitely not about Mordo, not thinking about him at all_ — before he's coming. He bites down hard on his forearm to keep from shouting and pants through it, tears pricking his eyes.

He collapses back against the mattress, exhausted. _Ashamed._

The cloak is still just hanging there, like it's seen everything he's just done and it does not approve.

"Shut up," he mutters.

 

****

 

He's been so restless lately, he's started walking to the bodega three blocks down on the corner even when he doesn't really need anything.

Pacing around the Sanctum, as fascinating as it is, has gotten too claustrophobic. Even turning the dial that changes the three gateways at the end of the second-floor hallway has stopped being interesting and become another frustration, knowing he can't visit any of those exotic places right now.

And, anyway, the owner of the bodega, Tristan, likes to talk about music. He was apparently deep into the early punk scene way back in the 70s — there's still just a hint of that about the old guy, his black clothes, a little anarchist gleam in his eye. Stephen likes his company, and even though that's not something he was ever a part of, he can appreciate the enthusiasm the man has for the genre and the stories he has to tell. It's nice to get lost in the minutiae of something other than magic and murder for a change.

It's late, but he doesn't feel like sleeping. He decides to head down there and pick up the paper, even if it's old now. Tristan's used to him coming by at odd hours. He makes the cloak wait in the Sanctum — despite its protests — and steps out, locking the doors behind him and making sure the wards are active.

He tries pulling his coat a little more snugly around himself, but he can't even button it now. He doesn't really need it, though. The night is just on the pleasant side of cold, and the first signs of spring are finally pushing through the gray shroud of winter, tiny buds waiting impatiently to come out and start growing.

Stephen feels like he's waiting for something, too. For this all to be over. Maybe he's just desperate to get this baby out of him, have his body all to himself for a change. Still, he can't deny that he's dreading what comes next. So, uncharacteristically, he's decided not to think about it. Let Wong and Christine think about it for him. _Surrender_ , he thinks, _isn't that what she said he should do?_

He's been dreading talking to Wong about Mordo, but he knows he has to. Something very wrong is definitely going on with him — and Stephen suspects that he's dangerous. Wong needs to know about it. The disappearances, too. The weird church. He needs Wong on that — it's important. The next equinox is coming up soon.

Stephen's been to Kamar-Taj at least three times in the last two days, but Wong has been off in various other dimensions, according to the student he left in charge of the library, tracking down more artifacts and ancient texts. And Stephen can't follow him right now. He can't do anything right now…

He passes the entrance to an alley. There's movement back there, in the dark between a dumpster and a sagging pile of garbage bags, and he thinks for just a moment that it might be Mordo. His heart speeds up and adrenaline washes through him. But the shape isn't right — limbs too thin, not tall enough. _Homeless_ , he thinks. Then a voice calls out, "Sorcerer!" and he stops and turns, but he can't really see anything.

There's a flash of red, and then…

He's gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay - end of semester blues, ya know! Anyway, here's the (possibly) thrilling conclusion to the story. Hope you enjoyed the ride. I certainly did :) 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!

Stephen wakes up just as suddenly as he'd blacked out.

This isn't the familiar slow swim back to consciousness he associates with drugs. He's just instantly back in his head again.

Only he's not in an alley near Bleecker Street, he's in a shitty room somewhere else — old, peeling wallpaper, water stains on the ceiling, no windows, _basement?_ — lying on a small bed. There's a man walking away from him — mid-fifties, balding, out of shape, terrible sweater vest, sleeves rolled up. He strips off a pair of gloves and tosses them into a small trash can on his way to a table strewn with various medical equipment.

As his brain comes back online, Stephen realizes his wrists are chained to the metal bed rails, and there's a catheter in the back of his left hand, hooked up to a bag of fluids. Just as suddenly he notices that his feet are unchained, his knees are up in the air, and he isn't wearing any pants.

"What the _fuck_ —?" he mutters.

The man standing at the table doesn't seem to care that he's awake.

He tries folding his legs down to cover himself and there's a familiar slickness between them. He realizes with a sick feeling that this fucker must have just had his hands up inside of him.

"I'm going to start him on 6 mls per hour and that should give us about..." The man thinks for a few seconds, "four to twelve hours or so to get the rest set up before there's any action." His accent’s not local — Texas, maybe, something southern.

 _This asshole must be a doctor. Doctor Asshole_ , he thinks.

A woman is standing by the door, busy texting on her phone — maybe in her forties, glasses, dressed like a librarian — but she's not the one that Doctor Asshole is talking to.

"That’s way too long. Can't you speed this up any more?" The voice — a woman's, and so familiar — comes from behind him and he cranes his head back to get a look at her. It's the woman from the church with her close-cropped auburn hair and thin, pinched face. She glances down at him for a second with flat blue eyes before turning her attention back to the doctor.

He remembers her from the church, of course. But now he's sure he knows her from somewhere else — he just can’t figure it out. Too much going on in his head to focus right now.

Doctor Asshole is talking. "Can't speed things up too much without risking complications." He gestures at the supplies on the table. "I just don't have a lot of options here if things go pear-shaped." Stephen hates him and his folky, country doctor voice already.

"Or I could just kill him now and we cut the baby out." He might hate this woman more, though.

The doctor slams his hands on the table in frustration. "I told you. I won’t do it. That’s where I draw the line. I stay out of it. I'll help you with this, but… The other stuff… _the killing_ "— he whispers the word like someone who cares might overhear him —"is not what I signed up for."

 _Great ethics_ , Stephen thinks. _Someone needs to go back to med school and take that class again._

"If you think you can get that baby out on your own without hurting it, you’re welcome to try. But don’t ask me to do it. I’ll walk away." He’s shaking his head. "And I know you can’t make me do it. You might be able to read my mind and put people to sleep, but this is too complex for you."

The woman behind him snorts in frustration. "Fine. Your way." She steps around to the side of the bed and stares down at Stephen with empty eyes. "Sorcerer." She says it like a curse. "Look at you now." She reaches a hand down to Stephen’s cheek and he jerks his head away.

She chuckles at that. "You bastards kicked me out. Told me I wasn’t good enough. And look at you now…" She smirks. "You never even saw me coming. None of you did."

And suddenly he knows who she is. "Katherine Reed," he says.

Her eyes go wide for just a second, but she recovers quickly. "I prefer Cat now." She smiles at him again, and it’s a cold, dead thing. "Katherine is long gone."

He's trying desperately to put everything together now because — _damn it!_ — he wants to know. _Why? How?_ And if he can keep her talking… Maybe he can buy a little more time.

"You're the one kidnapping people. Sacrificing them."

"I didn't start it," she says. "But I will finish it." She gives him a long look, considering. "This thing inside you…" She gestures at him. "That's the last step. The last sacrifice we'll ever need. Your timing really is perfect. So, I am grateful to you — we all are. For bringing this to us." That cold smile again.

" _Why?_ That's the part I can't figure out. Why are you doing this?" _Why do they need the baby?_

She chuckles a little. "Of course, you want to know. It bothers you that you're too stupid to see what's really going on."

"Why don't you enlighten me, then?"

She just smirks at him and shakes her head. And Stephen knows he's not going to get any more answers out of her. Not now.

Doctor Asshole clears his throat, and gestures at the IV. "If you two are done…?" He’s holding a syringe. Stephen has a pretty good idea what’s in it. _Pitocin_ , he thinks. Definitely not going to make things easier for him if he has any chance of getting out of here.

The woman — Katherine _, Cat_ — rolls her eyes, but steps out of the way. Stephen tenses up as the other man reaches for the injection port on the IV line. He’s got long legs and he’s pretty sure he can break this dickhead’s nose before he pushes the drug.

But, just when he draws back to kick the doctor in the face, the woman says, "no," and his muscles suddenly don’t work.

He tries again, but nothing happens, and again… _What the hell..?_ But his leg doesn’t cooperate and nothing happens. Doctor Asshole injects the drug and walks back to the table, nose frustratingly not broken.

Stephen now recognizes the magic creeping around the edges in his mind. He can’t get a clear impression of it, but it feels like a cold, reddish web, tinting his thoughts, controlling him somehow. He looks up at the frown of concentration on Katherine’s face and knows she’s the one doing it.

He struggles for a few more seconds against the intrusion, and she lets him — enjoying the power she has over him — slow smile forming on her lips even as she begins to sweat. _This is hard for her_ , he thinks. He picks carefully along edges of the web until he can pry it off and push it back, the red fading, receding into nothingness. And he can suddenly feel her control over him slipping — _almost, almost there_ …

Abruptly, the intrusion is gone from his mind. Katherine’s panting now — she looks surprised and a little scared, but she’s trying desperately to hide it.

 _Got you_ , he thinks. That was easy. He’s not even tired.

She gives him one more wary look and turns her attention back to Doctor Asshole. "I’ve got a lot to do," she snaps, suddenly all business. Stephen knows it’s an act — he’s rattled her. "Let me know when something’s finally happening." She pushes the woman by the door out of the way and rushes out of the room.

Doctor Asshole and the other woman exchange a brief look, and she shrugs. The doctor clears his throat. He walks back over to Stephen — careful to stay out of kicking range, unfortunately. "I’ll be back in a little while with Cat to check your cervix. Sophie’s going to be staying. If you need anything you can ask her."

Stephen supposes he should try to get on this asshole's good side, appeal to his sense of right and wrong. But, he's too fucking tired to fake it right now, so instead he says, "Fuck you."

The doctor frowns like he’s disappointed, smooths down his sweater vest as if that could possibly fix everything wrong with it. He nods to Sophie on the way out and shuts the door. _No lock_ , Stephen thinks. _Good._

Sophie looks up at him, gives him a bizarre smile, which he thinks is probably supposed to be reassuring, and goes back to her phone.

 

****

 

Nothing happens for a while. Stephen’s mind races, imagining and dismissing different escape scenarios, trying to figure out if there’s any possible way he can get out of here alive. If he can get the baby out of here alive…

And then he starts to feel different. It starts with an ache in his lower back that spreads down into his legs, and there’s a tightness in his belly. He knows he won’t have much time before the contractions begin in earnest. He needs to get out of here before he can’t walk anymore.

Stephen tests the fit on the chains again — too damn tight to slip his hands through, and when he tries yanking harder the pain in his bones makes him gasp. That’s just not going to work.

He glances back at the woman sitting by the door — _Sophie_. Still texting, not paying attention to anything she should be. He thinks about telling her he needs to piss — maybe she’d get close enough to kick — but that would just leave him in the same position he is now, and she could just as easily go for help, bring back Doctor Asshole and the red-haired woman, _Katherine_.

 _No,_ he decides _._ Her inattention is his best hope right now.

He lays his head back down on the mattress, closes his eyes. The spell he wants is one he’s cast a handful of times, but never like this. He tries using just the tip of his finger to draw the shapes of the sigils, weaving them together and whispering the incantation under his breath, imagines the power flowing into them. He’s done it before with his hands — the principles should be exactly the same, just on a smaller scale. He cracks one eye open and catches the glow of a tiny orange spark just as it fades. _It’s working._

He sneaks a quick look at the woman again — totally oblivious, Sophie really is the worst at her job — and doubles his concentration on the spell. _Please work! It has to work…_ He clenches his jaw and tries to control his trembling finger. The tiny ward begins to take shape, hanging in the air. _Almost there… almost…_

And then the first real contraction hits. He hisses and clenches his hands into fists, losing his concentration on the spell. The little ward blinks out. _Fuck!_

He can get it back, he knows he can. _Don’t panic!_ He breathes as evenly as he can through the rest of the contraction, trying not to make any noise. It hurts, but it’s nothing compared to what he’s experienced before — he can handle it. Finally, the pain eases and his muscles relax. He can think again.

Stephen lets out a long, shaky breath, glances over. Sophie hasn’t noticed his distress.

He starts all over again and, this time, it’s easier. The ward flashes to life almost immediately — tiny, but steady and bright. He curls his fingers and the spell floats down and merges with the chain around his wrist, setting the metal aglow for a moment. At first, nothing happens, and Stephen wonders if he’s screwed it up, but then the metal slips into — and then through — his arm and he’s suddenly free. It takes him only a moment to free his other hand.

"Hey Sophie," he says quietly.

Sophie finally looks up. And he blasts her with a wall of red sparks that sends her twitching to the floor.

Stephen yanks the catheter out of the back of his hand — not soon enough, unfortunately — and presses the piece of tape down hard to stop the bleeding. He spots his clothes in a heap on the floor and searches frantically along his belts. No sling ring, of course — _damn it!_ — that would have been too easy. He pulls his pants on quickly, considers his boots — no time, too many laces, too hard to bend over and tie them — and decides to just go barefoot. It’s cold outside, though, so he shrugs his outer robes and coat back on over his tunic, wishing for the millionth time that he’d let the cloak come with him when he went out.

He sighs and stoops down awkwardly next to poor Sophie — steady, strong pulse, pupils equal and reactive — she’ll be fine.

He eases the door open slowly, peers through the crack. Stairs going up into darkness. Night, then. _How long has he been here?_

He has to wait while another contraction turns him rigid, breathing as quietly as he can through his nose. When it passes, he draws a little circle in the air and blows on it until it becomes a steady light hovering above his hand. A little more power and it will work just as well as a weapon.

Stephen creeps slowly up the stairs. His bare feet are quiet on the wood steps at least.

The first floor looks empty at first — more darkness, wood paneling, a small living room with shag carpet and a single sofa — but there's a small light on in the room just across from him. He peeks around the corner, but jumps back when he sees Doctor Asshole sitting at a kitchen table.

After getting his breathing under control, Stephen looks again. The other man is reading the paper. _No_. Doing the crossword puzzle. He hasn't noticed him at all.

He pauses for a moment, trying to decide if he's the only one in the house. He doesn't want to run into Katherine right now if he can help it. He closes his eyes and pushes his mind out a little, feeling around for any signs of other living things. There's Doctor Asshole, of course, and Sophie, still unconscious downstairs, but no one else nearby. He can sense many minds farther out, right on the edges of his limit. He just hopes they stay away.

Stephen readies a spell to take out the doctor. And, for a second, he considers how he could make it hurt, how he could punish him for being such a failure of a doctor and a human being. It would feel so good. But then he pushes that back down, feeling like shit for even thinking it. That's not who he is.

He uses the same spell he'd used on Sophie, and it works just as well. And if he put a little too much power into it, that's just an honest mistake. At least the kitchen table didn't land on the asshole's head. Stephen stops to check on him — he's fine — and steps out the back door. There's no one outside.

He can see a few more houses nearby and a few trailers, then the darkness of the forest looming behind them. No lights on in any of the windows. Far off in the distance, he can just hear the sounds of many people. _The whole village maybe? Getting ready for the sacrifice? Big party tonight, apparently._ He lets out the breath he's been holding.

He steps away from the back door and moves as stealthily as he can through the space between two houses, trying to stay in the shadows and out of the moonlight. The ground is wet and cold on his bare feet. Finally, he slips out past the last trailer, which looks abandoned, and into the trees. No one notices him. He conjures the little light again once he's safely under the trees.

Then it's hard going over sharp sticks and rocks, and through mud — made more difficult because he can't see his damn feet past his belly — and he's seriously regretting not taking the time to put on his boots. A thunderstorm must have swept through the area earlier — he can see lightning off in the distance, flickering against blue clouds. Night insects are singing in the trees, just starting to wake up with the early spring, and the air smells like dirt and rain. Any other time, he’d find it comforting maybe, but not tonight.

The contractions are coming more frequently now — every six minutes or so according to his estimate — and they're getting more intense. Escaping would be a hell of a lot easier if he didn't have to keep stopping to pant and lean against trees. Still, he can't sense anyone behind him yet. It seems almost impossible that they haven't noticed he's gone, but they also don't strike him as a particularly competent group of evil cultists.

He's starting to feel exhaustion creeping up on him now, especially as the rush of adrenaline begins to wear off. _Trying to manage lots of complicated spellcasting and going into labor will do that to you,_ he thinks. Even if he was at full power, he'd be worn thin by now. The light in his hand begins to flicker as his concentration wavers and he lets it fade out. No sense using up what little energy he has left. The moon is bright enough to see by anyway.

He’s so disoriented that he’s not even sure which direction he’s traveling. He can see some lights ahead through the trees now, and he hopes desperately it might be a main road. Maybe he can get someone to stop for him. Assuming they've never seen any horror movies — he knows he must look seriously fucking deranged at this point.

He steps cautiously to the edge of the trees. Not a main road, then. _Shit._ It’s the bizarre church with the wards he’d seen when he and Christine had come here, although tonight it feels altogether different than it did last time. There’s something there… he’s sure of it. Menacing and somehow… _alive?_ It feels alive.

It would be insanely stupid to get near it right now — he’s alone, in labor, exhausted, and potentially being hunted by an evil bitch with mind control powers — but he has to know what’s going on with this church. It’s his job, after all. _Saving the world_.

"Why the fuck am I doing this?" he mutters. He might actually fulfill every horror movie cliche if he keeps this up...

But he staggers out of the forest towards the building, the initial feeling of menace growing and changing as he gets closer. _What is that?_ He’s never sensed anything quite like it, and it seems to be coming from the church, itself. _How is that possible?_

The closer he gets to the building, the more the sensations resolve into recognizable emotions — _hatred, frustration, sadness, longing, rage —_ all spinning together into a wild rush of feeling that makes it hard for him to hold onto his own thoughts.

When he's finally inside, it's almost too much. He holds his head, pressing against his temples as if that's enough keep his mind from flying apart.

And, still, he has to know more. What's really here. He doesn't have enough yet to make any connections. He staggers over to the wall and leans against it. The thrumming feels like it might shake him to the ground, it's so strong, but the feelings… they're so much easier to read like this. _Sharper._

 _Maybe…_ he thinks. Stephen rests his head against the wall — the heat of it feels like burning against his cool skin. Everything is so much clearer now in his mind, and the swirling emotions coalesce into thoughts he can recognize, and then he's being pulled under into…

_Her._

_She's so alone here. In this alien place._

_There's nothing here for her but darkness… And loss… Crushing loneliness and loss. Loss so deep it feels like a bottomless pit, sucking her down. She longs for her family — her children, her mates. Do they long for her? Do they even remember her? Are they searching for her? Even now, after all this time?_

_And she hates the creatures who have trapped her here in this place — these alien things. Hates them more than she's ever hated anything before. They smell bad and they use tricks to keep her in this form, to keep her from her family. She doesn't understand how or why? They are so weak and small. How can they keep her trapped here?_

_And she longs to be free. Even if it means the end of her. She knows the creatures are fragile and easy to end. They are nothing compared to what she is. What she could be... And she wants to feel them die, so much. So much._

_It's the only thing… The only thing she can think anymore…_

_Until then..._

Stephen comes back to himself, slowly and painfully. He's only vaguely aware of the wetness on his face, the unclenching of his muscles at the end of another contraction. He barely felt it.

The church is not a church. She's alive. And she's trapped here. Trapped here by these fucking assholes. _The creature…_ She's a prisoner. And he knows what he needs to do now. He needs to find a way to send her home.

And in that maelstrom of emotion, he becomes aware of the presence of another person behind him, like a tiny light in an immense swirling darkness. _Katherine_.

Stephen lifts his head from the wall in a daze, trying hard to focus on the real threat. He wonders how long she's been standing there and he's honestly surprised she didn't just kill him while he was out of his head, drooling on himself.

With some difficulty, he manages to pull himself away from the alien thoughts calling to him, looks around. Just Katherine then, no one else. "Where are your minions?"

That smirk again. "I told them to stay away for a while. I wanted to finish this part myself."

 _That was stupid_ , he thinks. If anyone around here actually had a plan, or thought logically before acting, he'd be fucked. Luckily for him, they don't. And Katherine is too arrogant and too stupid to bring a gun to a magic fight.

She thinks she can take him out on her own. And Stephen's fine with that.

"Okay." He shrugs. "Finish it." _Let's get this over with._

Katherine smiles and lifts her hand.

This time, he’s ready for it — as soon as he feels her magic settle on his mind, he pushes back at it with everything he has. And then he grabs at that red web with his mind and _pulls_. And he’s much more powerful than Katherine — a thousand times more powerful, even now — and he’s already so much _better_ at this than she is… He sees her eyes widen in terror just before —

_She’s saying goodbye to her mom, thinking she’s never coming back, she’ll never have to listen to that nagging voice again. Because she’s met someone and he’s her way in finally to what she’s always wanted, to what she’s always known she was meant for. After those bastards told her she wouldn’t fit in, couldn’t stay with them. That she wasn’t good enough to be a sorcerer like her crazy bitch of a mother. The bald one had looked at her with so much sympathy, Cat wanted to spit in her face. Well fuck them, fuck them all! And this, this is her last chance to get what she wants…_

_The man she’s met — just a boy, really — she can read his thoughts as clear as if he’s speaking. And he thinks he’s found the next sacrifice, the next victim to feed the beast, to save his family and his village for another year. But she knows she’s better than that — that is not her destiny. She can offer them more than just her life. She’s smarter than that. They need her._

_When the time comes, it’s easy to get rid of their leader. Just jump, she says. Jump, and he does. The stress — the terrible thing they have to do twice a year — was just too much for him to handle. And she pretends to mourn with the others — she’s always been good at faking it. Pretending to be like them. And when it’s time to pick a new leader…She reminds them that she’s been loyal for years, and no one’s done more for them, found more sacrifices, kept them so safe from the beast for so long. Kept them hidden from the police and the sorcerers. She’s smart, too. She fixed the wards on the church so each ritual lasts longer — keeps the beast quieter. They need her now. No one has given up what she’s given up — the most precious thing, the only thing she ever loved…_

_No! Do not even think it!_

_Because no one has suffered as much as she has. And she knows what they need now, a better sacrifice, something different. A way forward. A way to make the beast work for them for a change. And she knows just how to make that happen — what the ritual needs to make it work. And she can make it all happen — a new era for the village — a better future. And they owe her so much now. It’s her time._

_Her spies give her the best news, and she decides to go to the city to see for herself. But before she can take the trip he comes to her — right to her village! And she panics because why is he here? Why? Have they finally caught up to her? Does he know? How could he know? But then… She almost blows her cover when she sees him because it’s so ridiculous — this bastard sorcerer! — as pompous and arrogant as the rest of them, yet somehow he’s so stupid that he’s ended up like this. And he knows… he knows nothing. Nothing! In his mind she sees… Her mother — that old bitch — she sent him. Of course, she sent him. But he doesn’t know anything at all, can’t put all the pieces together. He stands right inside the church and still he doesn’t know! Doesn’t know what it really is… Or what he really is. Has no idea what he has inside him. And she could almost kiss him she’s so grateful for what he’s brought back for her — such a gift! The perfect sacrifice! — and it’s like fate telling her that she’s been right all along — that everything she gave up was worth it. And all the Gods are smiling down on her. It’s so perfect she could just —_

Stephen loses his hold on her mind when another contraction hits him. And this one is long and sharply painful. _Oh, fuck!_

He comes back to himself slowly. Katherine is still frozen in place, mouth open, staring at him. She lifts one hand to her head then lets it fall to her side, like she can’t believe what’s just happened.

He knows everything now. He’s seen everything — all of the missing pieces. And it is totally… _pathetic_.

"You..." He shakes his head in disbelief. "All of you... You're so fucking stupid." He can't help laughing a little. And if it makes him sound crazy, well, he's too damn tired to give a shit.

Katherine actually looks offended. "Shut up," she says dangerously. "Just shut up."

That only makes him laugh harder, until the next contraction hits and leaves him gasping, doubled-up. _They’re so much closer now, so much stronger — he’s running out of time._ She just stands there and watches him. _Probably waiting for her cronies to catch up so they can drag him back to the basement_ , he thinks. When he can finally straighten up again, he shakes his head at her.

"You idiots have no idea what you're doing. No one here has ever had any fucking idea what they're doing. Some fucking asshole caught this thing, and now you're all stuck. You're stuck feeding her. And feeding her. Anything to keep your pathetic wards in place. Anything to keep her from tearing lose and..." He gestures at her. "Eating you."

She just glares at him, biting her lip.

"And now you're running out of people to kill. You almost got caught last year, right? With the priest? Can't have that, can we? So you decided to stick closer to home. Safer, that way... That's why there was no kidnapping this fall. So who was it?" His voice has gone deadly quiet. "A loyal follower? A friend?" He pauses. "Your own child?"

"Shut up," she says again, tears welling in her eyes. "You have no idea what I've given up... What I've _sacrificed_..."

"Why bother with all this?" He gestures vaguely to himself, the baby. "You’re just going to fuck this up, too. She's just going to get loose. It should be obvious by now that you don’t have the skill or the knowledge to bind her to your will. You were never meant to be a sorcerer." He pauses for a moment, considering.  "You are stupid, though. Stupid enough to die trying."

"You have no idea how hard I've worked — how much I've given up to get here. There is no way I’m going to stop now. Give up all this power?" She swipes hard at the tears on her face, and that crazy glint returns to her eyes. "No way."

 _That’s better_ , he thinks. _Crazy makes you stupid._

"And there’s no way I’m going to let you take what’s mine."

"She doesn't belong to you. She never did."

He throws the spell he's had ready — a blast of pure energy — and it flings Katherine across the room in a shower of sparks, taking some of the furniture with it. She hits the wall hard and slides down, moaning, body crumpled under a toppled pew.

Stephen feels the tiniest stab of guilt that he might have actually done some major damage, but then Katherine pushes the edge of the pew off of her legs and stands up. She's clutching at her left knee, but her face says she's nowhere near done. She lifts her hands and conjures a ball of energy, swirling like fire. She snarls and pushes it at him, sending it flying across the church.

Her magic looks impressive, but it's slow and weak. He conjures a quick shield and bats it away easily. He knows this should already be over — she's no match for him at all, really. But then another contraction doubles him over. _Fuck!_

He can't help whimpering, it hurts so much. And this time there's a sudden rush of wetness between his legs. His first panicked thought is _blood?_ Had her useless attack actually managed to do some damage? But then he realizes what it is. _Amniotic fluid. So not good._

Katherine's figured it out, too. That cruel smile is back on her face. "Look at you…" She giggles, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. "You're so pathetic. I can't believe" — she has to stop to catch her breath — "I can't believe you let that happen to you."

Stephen thinks about making an exception to his no-kill policy. Rules were meant to be broken, after all.

Her laughter fades. "Or maybe…" She's deadly serious again. "You wanted it."

And then she makes another desperate grab for his mind. Stephen knew she would — could see right through her attempt to distract him. And still it almost works — he can feel the red coming, too scattered to stop it, then the blackness threatening to wash him away. At the last second he manages to push it back, and then the contraction eases completely and he's in control.

He shoves the magic back at her with everything he has. He can actually feel the blackness rushing out of him and into her mind, crushing her thoughts down into nothingness. Katherine drops to the ground in a heap, alive but unconscious.

He just stands there, panting, trying to think. If he can just keep her like that long enough to find something — _anything!_ — to bind her with or disable her. He pats at himself before remembering he'd left his belts back in the basement. A spell, maybe… He sifts desperately through his memory for the right thing, all the while trying to stay in her mind, keep her asleep.

And then the pain is back. _No_ , he thinks. _Not now!_ _Fuck!_ He grits his teeth and tries to hold the spell, sweat rolling down the back of his neck, hands shaking. But he can't _… he can't…_ The pain is just too much. He groans as the spell finally crumbles and flies apart. He staggers back against the wall, panting, clutching at his belly.

Katherine's eyes flash open. He can't do anything but lean against the wall, helpless. _Shit!_

Katherine pulls herself slowly to her feet, shakes her head, blinking. She stumbles just a bit, but then her eyes fix on Stephen and she steps forward, fury replacing the confusion on her face.

Stephen can only watch as she reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a long knife. _Not too stupid_ , he thinks. _At least she brought a knife to a magic fight._ And he realizes he might be fucked.

" _You_ …" she hisses. The light glints off the blade as she moves closer.

He can't concentrate enough to keep a spell in his mind, the pain is just sweeping it all away as fast as he can grab at it. He tries to conjure the simplest shield spell, but his arms are clumsy and it sparks and spits and then gutters out, useless. _He always did suck at those._

 _This is it_ , he thinks.

But then Katherine stops in her tracks. She cocks her head as if hearing something and her eyes go wide.

And now that the pain is easing, Stephen can sense it, too. Magic nearby. Strong magic, and a lot of it. _Familiar magic._ He closes his eyes and he can feel them. Wong. Master Hamir. Master Tran. Master Minoru. And others. Some of the students. _They're here! He has no idea how or why, but they're here._

And then Katherine's cell phone rings.

She glances down at it, confused for a second, and then back up at Stephen. And she knows. She starts shaking her head. "No," she whispers, and then louder. "No!" The tears are back, sparkling in her eyes. "How? How did they find us?"

Stephen shakes his head.

" _How!?_ " she screams.

He shakes his head again. He has no idea how they found this place, but he knows what it means. "It's over," he says, relief flooding through him, making him weak. "Katherine. It's over," he says quietly. He's too tired right now to be angry at her anymore.

Her eyes dart wildly from Stephen to the open doors and back. "No! It's not over. It… It can't be over…" Her voice trails off, tears running down her cheeks. "It can't… It's not… It's not supposed to happen this way!" She screams, searching desperately around for something.

She looks at him, almost pleading. "It isn't supposed to end this way…"

Her eyes land on the ward in the center of the floor and sharpen, resignation settling on her face. And Stephen realizes what she's going to do at the same moment she raises her hand.

He jumps at her, trying to push her arm out of the way before she can unleash the spell, but it's too late. A ball of red energy hits the ward, destroying the carefully painted lines and taking a chunk of the floor with it.

They both stand there waiting, breathing heavily. The constant thrumming has gone ominously silent. And the alien thoughts in Stephen's head grow stronger — satisfaction and rage. _Anticipation. Freedom._

" _Why?_ " Stephen hisses. "Why the fuck did you do that?"

And then the stone walls of the church actually begin to ripple. Stephen can't really comprehend what he's seeing. It's a little like watching solid matter bend in the Mirror Dimension, but so much worse, somehow. _So wrong._ The walls are darkening and growing liquid, the ripples spreading out into oily rings. Stained-glass windows dripping and flowing down into the stone.

Stephen shakes himself out of his trance. "We need to get out of here," he manages. The floor is starting to shift, becoming horribly soft and warm under his bare feet. He stumbles a little and grabs at Katherine's arm, but she shoves him away. She's still staring at the walls, fascinated.

" _Katherine!_ " He tries to get her attention, but it's no use. "Katherine, we have to get out of here!" She might be a murderer and a psycho, but she doesn't deserve to die, not like this. And she's still someone's daughter. He'd made a promise to Susan Reed to do anything he could.

Stephen grabs her around the neck and she struggles hard — kicking at him and scratching at his arms. But he's bigger and stronger than she is, and he manages to pull her through the rapidly shifting door of the church. As soon as they're outside, she lands a good punch to the side of his head and he drops her, staggering away.

When he looks back again the church is no longer a church. Stephen's not even sure what he's looking at — a huge churning mass of black tentacles, skin moving like something liquid, spiraling fractals rising and spinning on the surface. His eyes can't quite keep up with the shifting thing before him.

The creature rises up until she's taller than the trees around them, glistening skin shimmering in the moonlight like black oil on water. And the thoughts coming from her now are battering at Stephen's mind like breakers onto rocks — a hatred so intense and crushing he can barely breathe. And then all of that hatred finds its focus — _Katherine._

Stephen wants to yell at her to get away, but he knows it's pointless. She's made her choice.

Katherine just stands there, resigned and terrified, as the creature reaches out towards her. _Slowly. So slowly._ The tentacles wind almost gently around her body. They lift her into the air. _Five feet. Ten feet._ And then there's a sudden wrenching and as smooth slide of limbs and Katherine Reed comes apart. Blood and _chunks_ rain down on the muddy ground around Stephen.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. He's used to seeing blood and bone and muscle, but he's never watched the complete destruction of a living person before. And he knows he'll be next.

He can feel all of the creature's attention focus on him, alien thoughts shifting across his mind. _Confusion_ _— he smells wrong, different somehow... But he's still one of them. One of the creatures that imprisoned her. Confusion turning to rage again._

He needs something fast — something to occupy her until the others show up. _They can't be too far away_ , he hopes. Power is a problem — he's running low. And he doubts he'd have enough strength to hold her back even on a good day. And today is not a good day.

He looks around at the scattered bits of Katherine Reed, then back up at the monster. An idea forming. "Bet that felt good," he says. "Want to do it again?"

And he raises his arms and casts the spell, hoping his trembling hands don't betray him. He feels a little rush as the energy leaves him and then Katherine's form suddenly appears about twenty feet away, shimmering like a mirage. It's not a perfect likeness, and Stephen's guessing that it doesn't have to be — the creature doesn't even seem to have eyes. She is sensitive to thoughts, though, so he pushes a little bit of his consciousness along the thread of energy and into the decoy. _Arrogance, anger, insanity, insecurity_ — everything he remembers from his brief connection with Katherine, hoping it's enough to feel like the real thing.

 _It's working_ , he thinks, sagging with relief. The creature turns away from him, and he can feel her attention snap to the mirage, rage rushing up again. She raises a mass of tentacles and smashes it into the ground.

Stephen drops to the ground as pain stabs through his head like a blade. _Shit!_ He hadn't counted on that, but he supposes he should have. _Stupid._ He'd stuck some of himself in there, after all.

But he doesn’t have any time to think about it or reconsider. The creature has already realized that he's still here, and she's coming back again.

He casts the spell again, and this time the rush of power leaving him feels dangerous, like he's losing something vital. He'll worry about it later, if he's still alive. He grimaces and shoves a little bit more of his consciousness into the shimmering figure, hoping it's enough to fool her again.

And it is. She grabs at the decoy like a striking snake, tentacles tearing the magic apart and sending bright sparks flying.

Stephen groans and curls into a ball, squeezing his eyes shut. The pain in his head is quickly eclipsed by the start of another contraction, obliterating any chances he might have had left. He can't get up, he can't even move. And he knows this is it. He doesn't have the strength or the willpower left to throw another spell. He just hopes it's quick this time.

But he doesn’t die. He can see bright lights flashing behind his eyelids, hear voices shouting. The creature's thoughts shift suddenly away from him — rage turning to confusion, fear, despair. _She's surrounded again, trapped._

And then something is dragging him across the ground and he panics, trying to fight it. A tentacle? It doesn't feel like a tentacle. It feels like cloth and warm, hard muscle under his hands. And then someone's talking.

"That was a good spell, Strange. I'll have to remember it." _Is that… Wong?_

The dragging suddenly stops and Stephen opens his eyes. Wong is standing over him, out of breath and looking serious. Stephen tries to sit up, tries to get his mouth to work. He has so many questions he wants to ask… _How did they find him? How did they know?_ If he could just think…

He falls back on the ground, brain buzzing with the aftereffects of too much power running through it. _That was a stupid thing to do_ , he thinks. _Using that spell._ He feels burnt out and tipping dangerously close to delirium. It's like being drunk and wasted at the same time. And it would almost be pleasant, if every other part of him didn't feel so fucking bad.

Wong says, "Come with me," and picks him up off the ground this time, dragging him as fast as he can away from fight. Through the trees, Stephen can just make out the shapes of the Sorcerers working together, weaving their magic to form a bright cage around the creature, see her battering against it, struggling to be free. Another contraction pulls him back from the edge — sharpens his scattered thoughts. He stumbles against Wong when his legs stop working. Then he remembers something important.

"Don't hurt her," he says — _tries to say_ — when he can speak again. It's hard to use words, suddenly.

Wong doesn't stop pulling him along, but he tilts his head, listening.

"She just wants to go home. Please, don't hurt her. She's not —"

Wong just shakes his head impatiently, smiling a little, like Stephen's an idiot. "Of course, Strange. We know."

And then Christine is running towards them. She reaches for Stephen's face and then his neck, checking his pulse. Her eyes wander critically over him, assessing. "Are you hurt? How are you feeling? Can you walk? Why can't you walk? Are you in labor!?"

Stephen tries pushing her hands away. He shakes his head to clear it. "How the fuck did you get here?" Is she really here, though? Maybe he's started hallucinating. She grabs his arm and pulls it over her shoulder. _Must be real_ , he thinks.

"I brought her," Wong says. And then to Christine, "The two of you need to get as far from here as possible. I will find you as soon as I can. I have to go — they need my help." He gives Christine a serious nod. She nods back, looking beautiful and determined and really fucking scared.

Stephen looks back and forth between the two of them, stupidly wondering how Wong managed to get her to step through a portal when he couldn't. How he even knew to go to her in the first place.

And then Wong is rushing back to join the others, and they're alone.

 

****

 

They get as far away from the danger as they can in the dark with Christine half-dragging him through the trees. Stephen realizes as soon as they're well clear that he should have grabbed a sling ring from Wong before he left. He curses himself for being so stupid — if only he could think clearly — but his brain is just too messed up. And now they're stuck.

They keep staggering along until Stephen can't walk anymore. And then they just stand in place, Christine struggling to hold him upright as he pants through a really bad one.

"Stephen. Talk to me," she manages.

"Two minutes… Maybe one minute apart," he gasps. "Water broke… ten minutes ago. I think… right before you showed up."

" _Shit_." Christine looks around desperately. Wong is long gone, now. They both know that no help is coming. Not yet, anyway.

He leans against a tree, trying to catch his breath. "Baby's coming. I don't think… we're going to make it to Metro-General." _Best laid plans and all_ , he thinks. At least Doctor West won't get a chance to see him like this.

Christine looks around, chewing on her bottom lip. He can see it on her face when she makes a decision.

"Get your pants off, lay down, and spread your legs."

"I love it when you… talk dirty to me."

"Shut up," Christine says, fondly. "I have no idea how you can joke around right now." But the corner of her mouth quirks up for just a second.

She helps him pull his pants off and lay on the ground. His coat offers a little protection from the mud — but they really don't have any other options.

He tries desperately to come up with a way out of this, but he's still too fuzzy. He thinks about sending Christine back to get a sling ring, but dismisses it immediately — he doesn't want her anywhere near the creature if something goes wrong. And he knows she won't leave him. Not now.

Christine's already getting to work. She kneels between his legs and snaps on a pair of gloves from her bag, gives him a wince. "Sorry." And then she's pressing her fingers into him.

He barely registers the sensation as another contraction hits him — and it really does feel like being stabbed this time. He can barely breathe through the pain. He tries desperately not to curl up away from Christine or knee her in the face. There's suddenly an immense pressure inside him and all his body wants to do is push it out. Which the rational part of him _really_ doesn't want to do. Not here.

She waits until he can talk again. "Ten centimeters," Christine says. "Some blood. More than I'd like." She's trying to keep it together, but Stephen can tell she's terrified.

"Maybe we should wait… for Wong… to get back," he pants. He really doesn't have any good ideas. But now that he's lying on the ground, contemplating actually giving birth in the mud… waiting seems like a better option. "Yeah, we should wait…"

Christine just ignores him. "I think you need to start pushing. During the next contraction. I'll help you." She tries to give him a reassuring smile.

"Okay," he says again. _His brain really must be fried,_ he thinks, blearily. And then the pain ramps up again and he can't think anymore at all.

"Push!" Christine gives his knees a little shake, trying to get him to focus. "Right now, Stephen. Start pushing — steady pressure. That's it. Steady."

He wants to yell at her that he knows what to do — he's been to medical school, too — but he can barely even think coherent words at this point. So he bears down with all he has and — _oh God!_ — it hurts so much. He pushes as long as he can, but he has to stop before he passes out.

"You've got to remember to breathe. Just try to breathe through the contraction next time. Stop holding your breath — it's not helping." Christine's still using her annoyingly calm voice of reason.

He glares at her. "That's… easier said than done."

"Millions of people do this every day. So stop whining and try it." She gives him a goading smile, and Stephen thinks he might hate her more than he's ever hated anyone else. Ever.

Then there's another contraction, and another round of pushing that makes his vision go all sparkly, and more of Christine trying to bait him into getting angry enough to have a baby. He tries the breathing thing this time, and it actually works better — he can push longer before he has to give up. But, still, nothing happens.

He moans, " _Fuck!_ " and drops back onto the ground to stare up through the trees _. Stars. Clouds_. _Moth. Water falling on his face._ He can barely think past nouns at this point.

Then there's another contraction. And another. And another. Each one so much more painful and more draining than the last that every part of him is starting to shake with the effort. He's so cold, and yet his hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. He can't tell if he's trembling or shivering. _Shrembling? Trivering? Brain still not working_ , he thinks.

And then more time passes. An interminable amount of time. He's not even sure how he can still be alive after all this time. _He must be dead by now…_ Or has it been no time at all? Maybe just ten minutes? Twenty? Stephen's not sure anymore. Christine's still talking, rubbing his knees — but it all seems to be happening to someone else. _And where the fuck is Wong? What could be taking so long?_

And another one. He flops back down onto the muddy ground, exhausted, the pain leaving him absolutely wrecked. And it's not enough time to even catch his breath. He groans as another contraction begins, pain stabbing into his back.

"Okay, Stephen," Christine says. "It's time to push again. Come on — one big push. You can do it."

" _Shut up_ ," he spits, as his body tries to tear itself apart.

"Less talking. More pushing. I know you can do it. Just a little harder."

He's trying — _can't she see he's trying?_ — but as hard as he pushes it's just not enough. And he falls back again, even more spent.

Christine's voice is starting to lose that confident, life-coach vibe he hates so much — he can hear the panic creeping back in. They both know he's on the edge of exhaustion. "Please, please, Stephen. Please don't give up. You know I won't — _I can't_ — do a caesarean out here. I just..." She shakes her head. "You have to keep trying. Please? For me? Keep trying."

He wants so badly to give up and spend the rest of his life, however short that might be, just lying in the mud. That sounds like paradise right now. But when the next contraction hits — _holy shit, it hurts!_ — he curls up and pushes as hard as he can.

 _Fuck!_ The pain is almost unbelievable, it's so sharp and raw. _He’s falling apart. Disintegrating…_

"That's it! That's it!" Christine almost laughs with relief. "She's coming! I've got her — she's crowning. Just keep pushing. _Do! Not! Stop!_ "

He can't fucking breathe. He's going to pass out. And then, finally, something gives and that horrible pressure dissipates. He collapses to the ground, gasping and shaking.

"Okay, one more push and that's it. She'll be out. Just one more, Stephen. Come on! One more hard push, then that's it. I’ll stop torturing you. I promise." He's so wiped out can barely appreciate hearing Christine babble incoherently.

And this one isn't so bad — or maybe he's just exhausted beyond any ability to feel pain — but there's a slithering wetness, followed by immense relief. And Christine is wrapping something up in her jacket, rubbing at _something_.

 _The baby_. He's so, so tired, but he has to look, has to make sure she's alright. He struggles to raise himself up on his elbows. "Is — is she okay?" he stammers. "I don't hear anything. Why isn't she crying? Christine? Is she okay?"

"She's fine, I think" Christine sounds hesitant, but not panicked, staring down at her folded arms. "She's moving, and she's warm. I just... I can't see her. I mean, now that I've cleaned her off. She’s just… invisible, I think."

"What?" That doesn't make any sense — he saw her on the ultrasound. She must be real.

"Here — hold her. I need my hands free."

And, suddenly, Christine's pushing the tiny bundle into his arms. He's shaking so much that he's momentarily terrified of dropping her, but she nestles securely into his chest, warm, and real, and so obviously alive. Relief floods through him like a wave. He can’t see her, but he can feel her _._ And she feels _right_.

 _This is okay. Everything is okay_ , he thinks.

" _Shit_."

It’s too good to last, though. He can tell by Christine's increasingly frantic movements between his legs that something's wrong. And the way he feels right now — slippery, sick, and so, so cold, like he's sinking down into the mud — tells him that he's losing blood. _Fast._

 _Hemorrhaging out_ , he thinks.

Nothing they can do for that here. Christine’s really trying, though — pressing hard into his abdomen to try to get his uterus to contract. _Not going to happen_ , he thinks, _this isn’t a normal post-partum hemorrhage, too much blood_. And it's not such a bad way to go, all things considered — just sinking down into nothingness and slipping away. He’s experienced all that death has to throw at him and, in comparison, this doesn’t seem so bad. A good end. And, if this is really the end _— The End, The Doors, 1976,_ his mind supplies, uselessly — then it’s a good time to go. Evil cult leader, defeated. Eldritch horror, hopefully sent home to her family. World saved… again.

At least the pain is gone. _Mostly._

Christine mutters, "Sorry, Stephen. This is going to hurt," and then she’s pushing her hand up inside him, and leaning all of her weight on his belly. Pressing from both sides — trying desperately to stop the bleeding — and that hurts a little, maybe a lot, but it's a faraway sort of pain. He can block it out.

And then he’s drifting again. Time passes. _Slowly? Quickly?_ He can't tell. He doesn't give a shit anymore.

"Stephen. _Stephen!"_ Christine’s shaking his leg. "Listen to me. You’re bleeding too much. I can’t stop it."

She still looks beautiful to him. Even now — when she’s covered in sweat and gore, desperately trying to swipe her hair out of her face with a forearm, smearing blood everywhere. He tries to smile at her, but it probably just looks like a grimace.

"Isn’t there anything you can do? Magic? A spell? _Anything?_ " She’s desperate now. "I’ve seen you do the most incredible things…" Her voice cracks on the last word.

"Too tired," he mumbles, and closes his eyes again. _Brain broken. Can't do magic anymore._

" _Fuck_." Christine’s shouting now. "Wong! _Wong!_ " And then cursing under her breath. S _he never used to swear so much_ , he thinks, _that was always my job_.

The baby wiggles softly against his chest and he opens his eyes again.

_His baby. His._

He tries to keep his head up so he can keep staring at her — _through her_ — but he just can’t anymore. He gives up and lets his head drop softly to the ground. He can’t see her anyway, but he can still feel her tiny fingers wrapping around his thumb.

He thinks, _I’m sorry I can’t stay. I wish I could…_

"Stephen!" Christine shouts. "Stay with me, here! _Come on!_ " She pinches his calf viciously to rouse him, but he barely registers the sting. He can hear her crying now. "Don’t you dare give up! Please — for me…"

She’s shoving her hand inside him again. He wants to tell her to stop. _Please, just stop._ Wants to tell her that he’s broken inside and she can’t fix him. Tell her to come closer so he can see her face one more time. He wants that so badly. But he knows her too well. She can’t stop trying to save him. She won’t ever stop. It’s what he loves best about her, and that will never change.

He drifts again for a minute — _an hour, an eternity, who fucking cares…_

And then someone is picking his head and shoulders off the ground and jostling him into their lap. He gets a glimpse of strong, scarred hands and earth-colored robes, and thinks, _Wong_.

"Where the _fuck_ were you?" Christine demands. "Never mind," she snaps as Wong starts to speak. "Just open your damn magic portal... thing. _Whatever!_ " She waves her hands, wildly. "We need to get him to the hospital. He's crashing. _Now. Now!_ You promised it would be okay. You _promised…"_

Wong holds up a hand to stop her. And, surprisingly, it works. "Just one more thing," he says, and gestures into the air.

There's a beat of silence. Christine says, "What are we —?" and then the wind comes rushing up, swirling all around them. Stephen shivers violently.

Christine grabs at his legs as if they might both be swept away. "What's happening?" Stephen can barely hear her terrified voice over the rushing in his ears.

"It's okay," Wong says, he waves again and suddenly the swirling wind stills. The air feels thick and heavy with electricity. _With magic._

 ** _Yes. It is okay._** **_Everything is okay now._**

Stephen knows that voice all too well. "You," he slurs. _Assholes_ , he thinks.

 ** _Us_** — the voice agrees, and it sounds almost amused — **_Assholes._** **_We will fix what is broken._**

There's a sudden wrenching pain in his belly, and Stephen gasps and curls in as much as he can, trying desperately to not to lose his grip on the baby. _Oh fuck!_ For a few minutes there, he'd almost forgotten what real pain felt like.

Christine whispers, " _holy shit_."

**_We have returned your reproductive tract to its original configuration. You will not die now._ **

"Oh, good," he mutters. "That hurt, by the way."

 ** _You are welcome._** Demons really don’t get sarcasm.

"Great. Perfect," Christine says, getting annoyed that they're all still just sitting here. "You got your monster. Everything’s over. Can we get out of here now? He still needs blood."

"There is one more thing we have to do," Wong says.

Christine flings her hands up in exasperation. " _What?_ What do we have to do? Didn’t you just save the world?"

"The baby," Wong says, gently. "She needs to go home."

Stephen involuntarily clutches her tighter, causing her little legs to kick. He knows. Of course, he knows. This isn’t where she belongs. It’s just… He didn’t think it would be this soon. He didn't really think about it at all.

**_Her home is with Us. She is a part of Us._ **

"I thought you guys… didn’t believe in pronouns," Stephen manages. He knows he’s just buying time, even though it doesn’t matter. He can feel tears pricking his eyes, and he holds her closer up to his face so he can smell her baby smell one more time.

**_She is how you think of her. And now that will always be a part of Us._ **

The winds begin to pick up again, and Stephen thinks, _not yet — just a little bit longer_ — and then the swirling dirt and leaves are too much and he has to close his eyes. Wong squeezes his shoulder gently.

And then it all stops. Just the quiet sounds of the forest remain — birds just waking up with the dawn and crickets, the soft rustle of leaves settling back to the ground.

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know she’s gone. He clutches Christine’s empty jacket to his chest, squeezing his eyes shut tighter, and turns his face into Wong’s robes. They smell like incense and old paper.

"I am sorry, Stephen. I’m so, so sorry," Wong says. His hand on Stephen's shoulder is surprisingly gentle.

Has Wong ever called him ‘Stephen’ before? He’s too bone-tired and just… _hollowed out_ to think about how wrong that is right now. Everything is wrong. _Everything_. So what’s one more thing on top of all that?

"You have nothing to be sorry for," he manages before he finally — _finally_ — passes out.

 

****

 

He wakes up in his bed in the Sanctum, dressed in a clean t-shirt and pajama pants, with the cloak tucked in around him.

His mind is wonderfully quiet for a few moments and then he thinks — _the baby!_ Adrenaline rushes through him, turning him hot and cold all at once, pushing him to the edge of panic. But he remembers just as suddenly that she's gone. _Gone home._ And as the fear slips away that terrible emptiness settles inside him once more.

It’s late afternoon, he guesses, based on the angle and quality of the light coming in through the window. He stirs and the cloak slides off of him softly, as if afraid he might break. A corner of the fabric lingers at his hand and he curls his fingers around it, reassuring. "Hey," he croaks, voice barely audible, and then "I'm sorry…" For what, he's not sure, but the cloak seems to understand. It gives him another soft little caress, and then drifts to the side of the bed.

He looks down at his body carefully, wondering how bad everything is. Left arm first. There's a bandage on the back of his hand — where he’d ripped out the catheter earlier — and a saline lock in the median cubital vein. Christine must have put it in — it's been flushed already, but there's still a little blood in the line.

 _Blood transfusion_ , he thinks. He doesn’t feel like he's dying anymore — that slick nauseating sickness is gone at least. But he feels… He's not sure how he feels.

He continues his assessment. There’s another catheter currently taped to his right hand, line running up to a bag — just fluids. He reaches down between his legs and exhales with relief when he finds that everything down there is actually back to normal. The assholes kept their word, at least. No real pain, either. He’s sore as hell, but it’s all just abused muscles and strain — dull and distant. He’s not torn open anymore. His feet are a damn disaster, but he hardly cares.

And yet… he feels _empty_. So terribly empty — that hollowed out feeling from before hasn't gone away, it might even be more intense. And now everything around him feels empty, too, and artificial, like he's back in that fake world. It's his bedroom — he knows that — but it's wrong. He doesn't belong here. The rational part of him recognizes the aftereffects of shock and hormones — too much oxytocin fucking with him, too much magic flowing through his brain — but he can't quite accept that explanation.

He sits up carefully — not too dizzy — and looks around. Wong is sitting in the chair by the fire. Stephen watches as he lifts a beer bottle to his mouth and takes a sip.

Wong finally notices he’s awake. "You’re back," he says.

"I…" Stephen shakes his head to clear it. "I’ve never seen you drink beer before." He’s not sure why that matters, but he feels the need to point it out.

Wong contemplates the bottle in his hand for a moment. "I don’t often feel like drinking alcohol, not anymore… but today I do." He takes another sip. "I stole it from your refrigerator."

Stephen realizes someone's missing. "Where’s Christine?"

Wong heaves himself up out of the chair and moves closer to sit at the desk next to the bed. "She went back to the hospital to get cleaned up and get a few more supplies. She’ll be back soon. She says she will stay with you tonight." He sighs. "I have to go back to Hansen's Lake to… tie up a few loose ends."

Wong takes another deep breath and sags into the wooden chair.

Stephen’s not used to seeing him like this — so tired and worn — like he’s been defeated. _He’s acting like we lost_ , he thinks.

"I’m sorry. Again. I just wanted to say… I’m sorry." Wong says it so sadly that Stephen suddenly wonders if they did lose.

"Am I missing something? Did something happen?" He’s starting to worry that everything’s actually gone terribly wrong. That sense of unreality intensifies. "Did the creature…?"

"No. Nothing like that." Wong shakes his head, and Stephen sags with relief. "We returned the creature to its home dimension — it really was an innocent in all of this. No… I just… made some serious mistakes. Mistakes that I should have foreseen. I was careless and… it took longer than I had planned to find you. It caused you to suffer needlessly." Wong frowns and takes a long sip.

 _Is that what this is about?_ In the scheme of things, it seems like nothing. "That’s okay." Stephen waves it away. "You really don’t have to apologize for…" _Wait, that doesn’t make any sense_ , he thinks. He turns Wong’s words over in his mind.

"Hang on…" He tries desperately to clear the remaining fog from his thoughts, tries to make sense of things. He says, carefully, "You just said, ‘it took longer than you planned’… _What_ plan?"

Wong doesn’t look up, and Stephen’s heart starts racing in his chest. _This_. This is what’s wrong.

 _Just deny it_ , he thinks, _it would be so easy to convince me that there’s nothing._ _Please, just call me an idiot and deny it. Because I don’t want to believe it… I can’t…_

But then Wong sinks down into his chair, and when he looks up at Stephen, it’s all there.

"You…" Stephen can’t finish the thought, he’s shaking too much. He grabs the edge of the bed to keep from falling over. He feels like the whole world is dropping out from under him. "You set me up," he rasps. He’s too shocked to be angry… He’s too shocked to be anything...

"Yes." Wong’s gaze doesn’t waver. "I did." He sets the empty beer bottle down on the desk.

Now Stephen’s mind is racing, trying to put everything together. Everything that didn’t make sense before. "That search for the missing artifact…" _Of course, that's where it all started._ "It never existed. That was just you setting me up to get fucked over."

Wong just looks at him, and he knows he’s right.

" _Why?_ " It’s the only think he can think to ask. Everything certain in his life is gone.

Tears well in Wong’s eyes — and _that_ is surprising — but he doesn’t look away. "You would have found out soon enough — you’re too smart to be fooled for long." His smile is like a grimace of pain. "The best student I’ve ever had," he muses. "Better this way — to get it all out."

He starts talking. "I have known about the threat from the zealots and their prisoner for a few years. We — me, the other Masters — knew of the beast. How it had been trapped. And we knew that they were working on a ritual to control it. We came very close to finding them five years ago, but they managed to evade us, at the last minute. And, since that time, they have been much more careful — sending spies out to keep watch on the Sanctums, and Kamar-Taj — waiting for us to make another move." He pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath.

"But there was another reason for their interest…." His lip curls with distaste. "They had finally come up with a plan. They were ready to perform the ritual. But they needed something — something only a real sorcerer could provide. The final sacrifice. And we knew we needed to act quickly. But, despite our best efforts, we could not find where the beast was kept, or how it had been hidden. We knew it was here — in America, most likely in New York or close to it — but not the exact location. They guarded that secret above all others. We could not get close."

He takes a deep breath and continues.

"I also knew that their… desperation was growing. They were very eager to perform the ritual to enslave the beast, and I knew exactly what ritual they had come up with, and what they needed to complete such a ritual. The perfect sacrifice." He squeezes his eyes shut for moment, as if in pain.

"It was then only a matter of… _procuring_ that sacrifice" — Stephen flinches at the words — "and I knew they would not be able to resist. As soon as it became obvious that you…" he gestures toward Stephen, "what had happened to you… I knew their spies would pass the information to their leader. And she would act."

Wong closes his eyes for a minute, as if deeply tired. _And maybe he is._

Stephen says slowly, "You needed to find out where they were… to stop them. So you used me — the baby — as bait." He feels oddly calm and unreal. _Detached…_ "That ring you gave me wasn’t a good luck charm, was it? It had some sort of locator spell on it…"

"Not a locator spell," Wong says, "It’s just an object that is… _important_ to me. I knew I would be able to find it easily when the time came."

 _"Why?"_ His voice cracks a little on the word — the most important question. "Why couldn’t you tell me? I might have…" he gestures vaguely, "I might have even helped you. _Willingly_ … You didn’t have to…"

Wong nods, sadly. "I knew that their leader practiced a forbidden magic — magic that enslaves the mind, forces it open to be read like a book. I could not pick anyone who knew what I knew. I could not offer myself. As much as I wished I could. She would read my thoughts, and she would know. She was far too careful for that, and she would not risk leading all of Kamar-Taj to their location. _No_. I needed someone who did not know about the beast, who did not know anything about our plan, but who was strong enough to fight them if the need arose. Smarter than them." He looks up at Stephen, desperately searching his gaze for understanding. "I needed _you_."

Stephen can feel the anger rising finally, and he almost welcomes it. At least it makes sense to him. He suddenly wants to punch Wong in the face. Wants to strike him down with magic. Wants to rip the thoughts from his mind, so he can understand why — _how_ — he could do this. But instead he just says, "You’re my friend. And you let _that_ happen to me. You let that thing…" He chokes on the words. He can’t say it. He can’t even think it right now.

It’s too much. The implications — they’re just too much for him — even if suddenly everything makes sense now. Everything that didn't before.

"There is no ancient bargain!" he spits the words out. " _You_ made a bargain with them. You made a bargain with them to set your fucking plan in motion. No wonder I couldn’t find one fucking thing about it in any of your books!" He shakes his head in disbelief.

Wong doesn’t say anything.

"And what did they get in return? _What!?_ "

Wong looks up at him. He must be able to see the fury in Stephen’s eyes, but he’s still so calm. "The baby, of course."

And, just like that, all of the anger flows out of him, leaving nothing but an empty space behind, darkness sucking him down. Stephen drops his head into his hands and clutches at his hair. He’s just so tired. So fucking tired all of a sudden. He wants so badly to slip back in time to when he was bleeding out and just… do it all over again. He knows it's possible. He can do it right, this time. And just… _end_.

Wong can only say, "I am sorry. I am so sorry."

"It’s okay," Stephen says automatically, even though everything is very fucking far from okay. He just wants Wong to shut up and leave him alone.

Wong is still talking, though. "You should have been able to come to me with this." He gestures at the case files spread out on the desk — he's obviously been reading them. "Maybe… You might have found another way…Seen a solution that we could not…"

Wong blows out a breath and shakes his head. "I’m sorry I had to push you away. I was afraid that you would figure it out. Then everything — all of this," he gestures at both of them, "All of this _pain_. Mine and yours. Would have been for nothing."

Stephen looks at him coldly. "Your pain?"

"My pain," Wong says, nodding, his eyes suddenly fierce. "We’ve all made sacrifices, Strange. _All of us_."

"Oh yeah?" Stephen manages to pull himself to his feet — the stinging making him sharper. He wants to stand over Wong and make him feel like nothing. Feel the way he feels. "What sacrifice did you make?"

"I betrayed my friend," Wong says quietly. "You trusted me completely, as a mentor and… and as a friend. And I betrayed that trust."

Stephen doesn’t say anything — _can’t_ say anything to that — so Wong continues. "I knew that in the course of my duties, I would be called upon to make a great many sacrifices. And I have. _Many times._ But that is the nature of what we do. And it is necessary."

He looks down and away, then back up at Stephen. "I never thought… that I would have to do something like this. Give up my life, perhaps." He shrugs again, presses his lips together in a hard line. "But not this."

Stephen still can't speak. He isn't sure if he's even capable of saying anything right now that wouldn't be devastating.

Faintly, from somewhere downstairs, he can hear Christine calling Wong's name. Back from her trip to the hospital. _Not a moment too soon_ , he thinks.

Wong's heard her, too. He gives Stephen a single nod and turns away. Walks slowly to the door.

" _Wong._ "

He stops and turns back around.

"How do you keep doing _this?"_ Stephen gestures helplessly to the two of them. " _This._ What we do. Saving the world." He's shaking again. "How do you keep going?"

Wong blows out a long breath, looks up at Stephen. "You just… You get back up… and you save the world again. That's the only thing you can do."

Then he turns away and walks out the door.

 

****

 

The hardest thing is just making the appointment.

The next hardest thing is going to the appointment. Not getting there — that's easy — but knocking on the door and stepping into the office. That's hard. He slips the card Wong gave him into his pocket. He's brought it with him. He’s not sure why.

Doctor Patel is exactly what he expected. Her smile is warm and reassuring. She's professional and steady. British accent soothing. Her eyes are curious and intelligent. She shakes his hand without reacting to his scars or the slight tremble there. _Wong must have warned her_ , Stephen thinks.

He'd picked her because she's in London and he doesn't really have any connections here. He'd picked her because Master Minoru recommended her — she'd needed someone to talk to after nearly dying trying to stop the beast Thor had dropped on the city, and Doctor Patel had helped her work through all that.

"Master Strange," she says. "It’s nice to finally meet you."

"It’s actually… _Doctor_ Strange." He’s not sure why he can’t just let it go, but it seems important — a part of his life that he’s not ready to leave behind.

She smiles again. "I wasn’t sure which title you preferred. Thank you for letting me know."

 _But, maybe here_ … "Actually… it's Stephen."

She gives him a little nod. "What can I do for you, Stephen?"

And this was the hardest lesson to learn — that it isn't about him. It's about the work, the most important thing — saving lives, saving the world. Hasn't it always been about that? He's given up a lot for this. Sacrificed so much. They all have. What's one more thing? What's one more thing if it means he can keep doing all that?

And still it's hard…

He takes a breath and says, "I think… I think I need help."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Very loose sequel: Spark and Fade


End file.
